Chronicles carry the battle where archaeology cannot

The principal narrative accounts come from Jean Froissart, Thomas Walsingham, Robert of Avesbury, and the later antiquarian John Stow. They preserve details of a battle whose physical remains are extremely difficult to recover. Centuries of intensive activity in the English Channel have disturbed or covered much of the potential maritime archaeology. Historians must therefore compare written testimony while recognizing that the sources can be partisan and that several important totals remain uncertain. Those evidentiary limits sit behind any confident reconstruction of the battle.