Against the defenders’ twenty cannon, not even the strength of a single artillery regiment in modern terms, the besiegers could deploy only ‘eight cannon, two of which were 18-pounders’.13 The 18-pounders would have been culverins; although the word ‘cannon’ is used generically to describe artillery pieces, in strict terms ‘cannon’ describes a gun capable of firing a round of thirty-three pounds or greater. This lack of strength in artillery was to be one of the major problems faced by the besieging Jacobite army. Walker puts the strength of the Jacobite artillery at twelve field guns as well as three mortars, one of which was large and the other two small, whereas the Jacobite narrative claims two mortars, ‘one large and the other little’.14 However, the disparity in the two figures is so small that dispute is unnecessary; Walker’s slightly higher assessment might have occurred as a result of the Jacobite artillery moving some of their guns from time to time. It is known that, except for two pieces, the Jacobite guns were dispersed widely; the other two ‘were raised in one place’.15
What were conditions like for the soldiers of the opposing forces? Since the Jacobites had travelled north for a swift campaign, they were not best equipped for static warfare, a situation exacerbated by the comparative haste with which their army had been created. Tentage was in very short supply and, with few solid buildings around the city, most Jacobite soldiers had to improvize, constructing shelters from sods of earth on the hillsides that overlooked the city. Since the army’s commissary left much to be desired, food was scarce with meat in very short supply. The basic ration was water and oatmeal from which was produced an insipid gruel although, when fires had been built, bread could be baked. The rain that had fallen on King James as he sat astride his horse on Foyle Hill on 18 April was an augury of the weather in the days and weeks to come; one French officer was to comment that it almost always rained at Derry. In their crude hillside shelters the Jacobite soldiers must have endured extremely unpleasant conditions, suffering wet and cold; their morale and, therefore, their effectiveness as a fighting force would have been much diminished.
Within the walls the conditions facing the Williamite soldiers were much better in the opening days of the siege. They had solid buildings in which to shelter although, as the weeks passed, many of the city’s buildings would have lost all or part of their roofs as Jacobite mortar shells fell through them. The defenders’ rations were certainly more generous than those of their enemy: a private soldier was allocated a weekly quota of a salmon and a half, two pounds of salt beef and four quarts of oatmeal, while a ration of a small amount of beer was also made, initially in lieu of pay.16 Remembering that this was also perceived as a war for the survival of Protestantism in Ireland, it is worth noting that the inhabitants were well served with clergymen, of whom there were twenty-six in the city. Most of these, eighteen, were from the established church and the remaining eight were from ‘the church of Scotland, or Presbyterian persuasion’.17 Among the latter was John Mackenzie who wrote that
At this time, that there might be a good understanding and harmony among the besieged, it was agreed to by Governor Baker, that the Conformists should have the Cathedral Church the one-half of the Lord’s-day, during the whole time of the siege, and the Non-conformists the other half.18
Thus the Presbyterians were to use the cathedral from noon each Sunday, and during their assemblies they held collections for the relief of the poor, the sick and the wounded soldiers. With two sermons in the cathedral each Sunday, plus two or three other meetings at other locations in the city and the use of the cathedral every Thursday, the Presbyterian clergy were kept busy.19 This was true also of the Church of Ireland clergy. Of all the clergymen one chronicler wrote that they all encountered the dangers of the siege – four Presbyterian ministers died during it – and
each in his turn, performed Divine Service daily in the Cathedral. It must be acknowledged, however, that the ‘raw’ multitude, on some trying occasions, exhibited feelings of extreme dissatisfaction which would have been of serious consequence, had not the Clergy of both parties prudently quieted them, by preaching forbearance and obedience on account of the common cause which they had all unanimously agreed to defend.20
This hints of the tensions that existed between the Anglican and Presbyterian defenders. In the aftermath of the siege the strongest evidence of this tension was provided by the accounts written by George Walker and John Mackenzie which began a debate that continued even into the twentieth century. Walker confirms that the Anglican churchmen, when not in action, led prayers and gave sermons every day while ‘the seven nonconforming ministers were equally careful of their people, and kept them very obedient and quiet’. This comment – that they kept their people ‘very obedient and quiet’ – does more than hint at tension between the two denominations: it confirms the existence of that tension and indicates that Walker had little time for Presbyterians, which is proved when he goes on to state that the state of the Presbyterians of the city was in marked contrast to the
behaviour of their brother Mr Osborn[e] who was a spy upon the whole North, employed by my Lord Tyrconnel, and Mr Hewson, who was very troublesome, and would admit none to fight for the Protestant Religion till they had first taken the Covenant.21
Perhaps the strongest evidence of Walker’s attitude to his Presbyterian fellow defenders is contained in his own account of the siege in which he names all the Anglican clergy of the city during the siege but claims that he did not know the names of the Presbyterian ministers.22 One of those men whose names he wrote that ‘I cannot learn’ was the Reverend John Mackenzie, chaplain to Walker’s own regiment. Mackenzie’s subsequent account of the siege led Walker to take up his pen again to produce A Vindication of the True Account of the Siege of Derry in Ireland in which he maintains that he had not known the names of the Presbyterian ministers and although he ‘took some pains to enquire into them could not be informed’.
However, he had since established the names of the ministers and included these in his Vindication. If anything, this exacerbated the hurt already felt by the Presbyterians since Walker included a Mr W. KilChrist and a Mr J. Machiny.23 The latter was, of course, Mackenzie, whose name he must have known, and the former was Gilchrist. Not only was the misspelling ‘KilChrist’ insulting, and probably deliberately so, but it also verged on blasphemy.
However, all parties were exhorted to forget their denominational differences and to act ‘as one in defence of the interest’ of William and Mary and the Protestant religion against the enemies of both.24 Religious belief was to play a large part in maintaining the defenders’ morale over the weeks to come. Walker reflected on their situation and their prospects:
It did beget some disorder amongst us, and confusion, when we look’d about us, and saw what we were doing; our enemies all about us and our friends running away from us; a garrison we had compos‘d of a number of poor people, fright[e]ned from their own homes, and seem’d more fit to hide themselves, than to face an enemy; when we considered we had no persons of any experience in war among us, and those very persons that were sent to assist us, had so little confidence in the place, that they no sooner saw it, but they thought fit to leave it; that we had but few horse to sally out with, and no forage; no engineers to instruct us in our works; no fire-works, not so much as a hand-granado to annoy the enemy; not a gun well mounted in the whole town; that we had so many mouths to feed, and not above ten days provision for them, in the opinion of the former governors; that every day several left us, and gave constant intelligence to the enemy; that they had so many opportunities to divide us, and so often endeavour’d it, and to betray the governors; that they were so numerous, so powerful and well appointed an army, that in all human probability we could not think our selves in less danger, than the Israelites at the Red Sea.25
While much of this is accurate it should also be remembered that it was an assessment written with hindsight, when the siege was over and when Walker was attempting to enhance his own role
in the defence. Thus it is not entirely true to say that there were no experienced soldiers in their midst, nor that there was no one to advise on defensive works; and neither was it accurate to claim that there was not a well-mounted gun in the town. On the contrary, both Henry Baker and Jonathan Mitchelburne were experienced soldiers, and there were others, while both Baker and Mitchelburne had a good working knowledge of defensive works – and Lundy had already done a good job in this respect – and most of the guns were as well mounted as might be, again thanks to Lundy. Thus, while bad, the situation was not quite as dire as painted by Walker.
In these early days of the siege at least one Royal Navy warship ventured close to the city following the departure of the relief fleet. HMS Bonadventure,1 under Captain Thomas Hobson, anchored at what Hobson described as the ‘mouth of the harbour of Londonderry’ on Thursday 25 April. In fact the ship was in ten fathoms of water off ‘the Tunnes’ – the Tuns.27 This is a well-known hazard to shipping, a dangerous sandbank feature just off the mouth of Lough Foyle; the Tuns stretch for some three miles towards Portstewart and the feature is above water at low tide.2
Next day Bonadventure moved inside the lough to Greencastle and Hobson’s log refers to damage to another, unnamed, vessel in bad weather conditions. But the weather was not all that the ship had to contend with, for on the Sunday a sailor in the ship’s boat was shot in the arm by Irish soldiers on the shore. A bone was broken and the unfortunate sailor had to have his arm amputated the following day.28 The boat party seem to have run foul of a group of Jacobite soldiers who had travelled a considerable distance along the north-eastern shore of Lough Foyle, probably in search of plunder.
On the last day of the month two Scottish men of war sailed into the lough, but the little fleet remained on station there until 3 May when Bonadventure left the ‘river of Derry’ and later anchored off Rathlin Island. Next day the ship was ‘at sea en route for Chester over Liverpool’.29 There is no clear indication from surviving records of why Bonadventure and the other vessels were in Lough Foyle but they might have been following orders that had been overtaken by the events of recent days.
Since they were not Royal Navy vessels, the two Scottish men of war deserve some explanation. Their presence in Lough Foyle indicates the link between events in Ulster, especially the siege, and Scotland. This was several decades before Scotland was absorbed into the Union, and thus the country retained its own government. In 1689 this took the form of the Convention of Estates, which sat from 14 March to 24 May 1689 and which included both Jacobites and Williamites. However, James’ ‘sheer political folly . . . and his condescending attitude towards the convention’ ensured that the Jacobite faction was kept in check by the Williamites, who also demonstrated greater political skills. A later Constitutional Settlement declared that James VII had forfeited the throne of Scotland.30
Scotland’s government was concerned at the threat to the country’s security posed by developments in Ireland, especially in Ulster which was so close to Scotland and where so many Scots had settled. (One estimate is that between 1660 and 1688 some 10,000 Scots had settled in Ulster to add to the many already there.)31 This government decided that it would aid the Protestants of Ulster and take measures to defend the west and south-west of Scotland. Travel between Ireland and Scotland was restricted and then, on 16 April, sailings to Ireland were embargoed, lest the vessels be taken and used for an invasion of Scotland.32 When a Jacobite spy, Francis Brady, was captured at Greenock in April he was found to be carrying letters to Scottish Jacobites from James and Melfort; those letters proposed the establishment of a Jacobite convention which was seen as a threat to the existing convention and also heightened fears of an invasion from Ireland.33
One of the earliest decisions of the convention was to monitor coastal activity and shipping, to which end two small vessels, Pelican and Janet, were hired in Glasgow. To command these ships Captains John Brown and William Hamilton were commissioned on 13 April. The two frigates, as they were described, were ‘to cruise betwixt Scotland and Ireland’ to garner intelligence, and their commanders were authorized to fight and sink any ship belonging to King James VII anywhere from Skye to Cornwall.34 In addition to their own ships’ companies, Brown and Hamilton were given a company of infantry to man the vessels.35 They were also left to their own devices to acquire armament for the ships. It was this pair of frigates that joined Hobson’s Bonadventure in Lough Foyle at the end of April, which suggests that the two captains had already fitted out Janet and Pelican with ordnance; this was a considerable achievement.336
Meanwhile, King James’ lack of decisiveness had left his commanders with no clearly defined objective. The French general Maumont was placed in overall command at Derry, with Pusignan, another Frenchman, Richard Hamilton and the Duke of Berwick, James’ son, as his subordinates. Although James had left no specific orders, Berwick noted that the army’s first intention was to establish a blockade to cut the city off from resupply and reinforcements. Maumont, in a letter to Louvois, wrote that he had been placed in charge of ‘le siege de Dery’ but was also responsible for dealing with the other rebels who had taken refuge in Enniskillen.37 While performing this role, the Jacobite army would be waiting for the supplies and equipment needed to conduct a proper siege. No consensus existed in the Jacobite high command, with some, such as Melfort, believing that time spent before Derry was time lost in Scotland. Melfort and his supporters argued that there should either be a proper siege or that a force should be left to blockade Derry while the main body of the army sailed for Scotland. Those arguing for a Scottish campaign were supported by Viscount Dundee in Scotland, who was urging strongly that such a strategy be followed.38 Had this strategy been adopted, and the necessary ships been available, there was no need for the port facilities at Derry; the fleet could have embarked men and equipment in Lough Foyle below Culmore; the Williamite relief fleet, it will be remembered, had dropped anchor at Redcastle.
In the prevailing situation, the Jacobite forces began their deployment around the city. On the west bank of the Foyle infantry units were arrayed in an arc that touched the river’s banks to the north and south of the city. Since the high ground within this arc, from west to north, was occupied by Jacobite troops, they dominated the area completely:
a detachment of both horse and foot pitched their tents at Pennyburn in order to intercept supplies from Culmore to the town – guards were also placed on the opposite side of the river, and plundering parties were dispatched towards Innishowen.39
At this stage Culmore was still in Williamite hands; the troops at Pennyburn were fortunate in that some of them at least seem to have had tents, although this may refer only to officers. The ‘plundering parties’ sent into Inishowen illustrate the lack of supplies within the Jacobite army which was having to live off the land; presumably it was one such party that engaged Bonadventure’s ship’s boat. These foragers come in for critical comment from Mackenzie, who noted that, on 20 April,
A party of King James’s horse and foot marched down to Culmore, and from thence down through the barony of Innishowen, and there robbed a great number of people, that were waiting for passage to Scotland. They placed guards on the waterside, to stop all passage from this city to Culmore by land, which debarred us of intelligence from that place.40
On the east side of the Foyle a strongpoint was created by the commanding officers of two Jacobite infantry regiments, Lords Bellew and Louth. Based on Stronge’s orchard, this faced the walled city and probably included the land on which Ebrington Barracks was later built as well as that occupied by the modern St Columb’s Park. References to ‘the guards on the opposite side of the river’ and ‘on the waterside’ include the Stronge’s orchard position as well as locations established on the high ground overlooking the city in the areas now known as the Top of the Hill and Gobnascale. The lower ground in this latter area was then covered in forest which stretched for over two miles from the present-day Craigavon Bridge almo
st to the village of Newbuildings. The principal Jacobite account of the war states that ‘the army marched to the north and east side of Londonderry, in the county of Tyrone’ and that it was ‘divided into two principal bodies on the county of Tyrone’s side’.41 In fact, the bulk of Jacobite troops on the east side of the Foyle were in County Londonderry rather than Tyrone. The latter county’s northern border with Londonderry lies some five miles south of the walled, city and no ‘principal’ part of the besieging army would have been based there.
And it was from the position in Stronge’s orchard that active hostilities began on 21 April. Those within the city watched as a demi-culverin, a 12-pounder gun, was emplaced in the orchard within 500 yards of the city. Mackenzie states that the weapon was 180 perches distant east by north from the town; this was 990 yards at which distance the weapon’s effectiveness would have been much reduced. The gun opened fire, becoming the first Jacobite artillery piece to do so. Some forty rounds were fired, which indicates that the bombardment lasted several hours. One account, from Joshua Gillespie, tells us that a man in the city was killed and that buildings were damaged, including the town house in the Diamond. The effect of this fire calls into question Mackenzie’s ability to estimate distance. However, Mackenzie states that the bombardment ‘did little harm, though it was then a little more frightful to our people than afterwards’ while Walker comments that, apart from some damage to the Market House, the firing had little effect. It may be that Gillespie was confusing the effects of the single gun with the bombardment of two days later when additional weaponry had been emplaced at shorter range. However, the vulnerability of the Shipquay Street area was demonstrated effectively by this bombardment. Had the designers of the walls foreseen such an event, they would surely have included a curtain wall, to create an enceinte, in the area.
The Siege of Derry 1689 Page 13
