Three hundred ships had set sail from St. Malo with two thousand knights and men-at-arms aboard, bound for the rich port of Dartmouth. By the time the fleet reached the wide beach of Blackpool Sands in the spring of 1404, fewer than two hundred armoured men would actually step onto English soil. Most of them would never see Brittany again. The French commander, William du Chastel, lay dead in the surf by sundown, and a hundred prisoners, including three lords and twenty-two knights, were on their way to the Tower under English guard. The Hundred Years' War rarely produced engagements this lopsided, and almost never one in which the decisive missiles included stones thrown by local women.
The raid was not unprovoked. The English Channel in 1403 was a slow-burning war zone where merchants and privateers shaded into one another, and Dartmouth sat squarely in the middle of it. In August, du Chastel had burned through Plymouth and sailed home with the spoils. Two months later, John Hawley, the merchant and former mayor of Dartmouth whose ships were a fixture of these waters, joined with Thomas Norton of Bristol and snatched seven French vessels in the Channel. In November, Sir William Wilford led an English revenge raid on Brittany itself, taking forty ships and burning along the coast. By the time the new sailing season opened in 1404, the Bretons wanted Dartmouth specifically. Du Chastel, a powerful Breton lord with brothers and a personal grudge, intended to deliver it. He assembled three hundred ships at St. Malo and embarked his army with two vice-admirals beneath him, the Lords of Chateaubriand and de Jaille.
The expedition began badly. On the very first day at sea, part of the fleet broke discipline and attacked allied Spanish wineships, and although order was restored, the spirit of the venture never quite recovered. Pieces of the fleet drifted away on their own errands. Du Chastel pressed on toward Devon with what remained and dropped anchor off the long, pale crescent of Blackpool Sands, three miles southwest of Dartmouth near the village of Stoke Fleming. He needed his scattered ships to come back together, so he waited. He waited for six days. On a beach in plain view of every fisherman, farmer, and church bell in South Devon, the most feared raider on the Channel coast gave his enemies almost a week to prepare.
The English used every hour. John Hawley, in his late fifties and politically connected through his shipping interests, was no longer mayor but still the man Dartmouth turned to in a crisis. He pulled in men from the inland parishes and, according to French chroniclers, mustered local women into the militia as well. Norman Longmate would later judge the French estimate of six thousand defenders "grossly exaggerated," but whatever the true number, it was enough. Across the foreshore, the defenders dug a water-filled ditch crossed by a single narrow causeway. English archers took positions behind it. The Earl of Warwick is thought to have advised Hawley on the defensive arrangements without taking the field himself. The English commander on the day is unknown to history, but the trap he laid is not.
On the sixth day, du Chastel and de Jaille held a council on board ship. With many of their men still missing, only about two hundred armoured knights were available to land. Du Chastel wanted to flank the English position. De Jaille, perhaps reading the long week of inaction as cowardice, accused him of being afraid. Insulted, du Chastel ordered an immediate frontal assault. The French disembarked without their usual screen of crossbowmen ahead of the men-at-arms, an omission that would prove fatal. As the armoured column advanced toward the causeway, English arrows came down on them, and from the flanks the local women hurled stones. Some knights tried to wade the ditch; some drowned in their armour, others struggled across only to be driven back. Eventually the French gave up and turned for their ships. Du Chastel, refusing to withdraw, was killed where he stood. A hundred prisoners were taken, two of them his own brothers.
News of the victory travelled fast. A service of thanksgiving was held at Westminster Abbey, and Henry IV himself attended. The king's interest was not purely celebratory. On 25 May he asked the mayor of Dartmouth to send five of the prisoners up to Nottingham for interrogation; he had uncovered a plot by Maud, Countess of Oxford, that supposedly involved a French landing, and a Welsh esquire had also been captured at Blackpool Sands, raising the possibility of links to Owain Glyndwr's revolt then burning across Wales. Nothing conclusive came of either thread. The battle itself had no lasting strategic effect. There is an unconfirmed account that Tanneguy du Chastel returned later that year to avenge his brother. French raiding along the Channel coast continued through 1404 and into 1405. But for one afternoon at Blackpool Sands, a Devon merchant's improvised defence had broken a Breton invasion fleet, and the king of England had paused to give public thanks.
Blackpool Sands lies at 50.32 degrees north, 3.61 degrees west, on the South Devon coast about three miles southwest of Dartmouth. The wide pale crescent of the beach is easy to identify from low altitude in clear weather, set between Stoke Fleming village and the headland of Stoke Point. Exeter Airport (EGTE) is roughly thirty nautical miles to the north-northeast; the small grass strip at Eaglescott (EGFE) lies further inland. Channel weather is changeable; sea fog can roll in quickly from the southwest, so a coastal track at 2,000-3,000 feet is best for confirming the beach against the wooded valley behind it.