Duke William had had a difficult summer.
It was one thing to assemble an invasion force, eager for action and excited by prospects of plunder, but quite another to keep it together in the face of delays, accidents and frustrations.
His nerve held, however, and his luck: hanged of 27 September, when the wind finally allowed his fleet to sail From St Valéry-sur-Somme.
William himself was in a ship given to him by his wife Mathilda; it was called the Mora, and appears in the Bayeux Tapes try as a vessel of typical Viking build.
Little details recorded by the chroniclers show plainly that tension ran high in the Norman fleet, and every move that William made was significant in the eyes of his men.
With the kill of an assured leader, he calmed heir fears on the night crossing, and turned certain adverse incidents of the landing at Pevensey early on 28 September into morale-lifting encouragements.
More practically to the modern mind, he acted swiftly but methodically to secure his bridgehead immediately he was ashore, erecting earthwork fortifications first at Pevensey and then at Hastings, which offered a better base for operations.
He also set out to pillage and ravage the countryside.