The Siege of Derry 1689

by Richard Doherty

  Herbert had only been given his command as Admiral of the Fleet and Commander-in-Chief in the English Channel and Irish waters by William on 11 March; he was also head of the Admiralty Commission. William seems to have been especially dilatory in this appointment as Herbert, ‘a colourful, immoral, heavy-drinking Welshman with a violent temper’, had been dismissed by James II in 1687 following his refusal to agree to the repeal of the Test Act and penal laws. It was Herbert who carried the invitation to William to come to England; the Prince of Orange had then appointed the Welshman as commander-in- chief of his invasion force on account of his popularity with the officers of the English fleet.20

  On his appointment to command in the Channel and Irish waters, Herbert was also given permission to cruise between Ireland and Ushant, in the approaches of the English Channel, to prevent a French landing in either Ireland or Scotland, but it was early April before he was able to put to sea. By then one of his orders was redundant: he had been told to treat James well if he captured him. Even then he had only twelve ships of the line under command, and these were not fitted out to the standard that Herbert would have liked.21 When he had been at sea for two days, he discovered that the French were already en route to Munster. He set off in pursuit with his fleet reinforced by another four ships.2 The French were making for Bantry Bay and it was there that Herbert, following a brief stop at Milford Haven, made contact with them. On 1 May the two fleets joined in battle in the bay. An offshore wind was blowing which allowed Chateaurenault to bring his warships out to sea, thereby covering the transports. Sailing on parallel courses, French and English warships pounded each other in an extremely fierce engagement that caused considerable damage on both sides. Not every ship could engage a foe, one of the characteristics of a sea battle fought in line, and the action was inconclusive. Herbert withdrew to repair the damage sustained by his ships, while his rival sailed back into Bantry Bay where the transports completed their unloading before setting sail on the return voyage to Brest. Neither side lost a ship in what became known as the Battle of Bantry Bay, the largest naval engagement ever fought in Ireland’s coastal waters.22

  In much the same way as the Great War battle of Jutland discouraged the German High Seas’ Fleet from putting to sea again to engage the Royal Navy, this encounter at Bantry Bay seems to have had a similar effect on the French. Herbert, meanwhile, resumed his patrolling of the western approaches of the English Channel with his command increased to forty Royal Navy warships and eleven Dutch ships of the line. William showed his approval of the navy’s role by dining on board HMS Elizabeth at Portsmouth where he created Herbert Earl of Torbay, later changed to Torrington; he also knighted Cloudesley Shovell and John Ashby, two of Herbert’s most outstanding commanders.23 Although the battle had been a tactical success for the French – they had, after all, landed their supplies and personnel – Chateaurenault had failed to grasp the opportunity to achieve a strategic victory by pursuing Herbert’s ships and bringing them to battle a second time. This would have given the French the opportunity to defeat Herbert in detail, thereby gaining control of the Irish Sea. In turn, this would have allowed the French navy to play a role in the siege of Londonderry, both by supplying and supporting the besieging army and denying free passage from England to Ulster for any relief fleet. It was this strategic failure of the French navy that led naval historian A W H Pearsall to note that ‘although in the end the fate of Ireland was settled by the outcome of the military struggle, the conditions of that struggle were largely set by the ability of the Anglo-Dutch navies to supply and reinforce their respective armies there’.24 The truth of that statement applies as much to the local struggle around Londonderry as it does to the overall struggle in Ireland, but the naval aspects of the siege are rarely considered beyond the actions of those few ships that finally brought relief to the city.

  Notes

  1: Walker, op cit, p. 44

  2: Ibid, p. 43

  3: Ibid, p. 57

  4: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 47

  5: Walker, op cit, pp. 57–8; Mackenzie, op cit, p. 45

  6: Walker, op cit, pp. 58–9

  7: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 47; Simpson, op cit, pp. 129–30

  8: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 47

  9: Mackenzie, op cit, pp. 47–8; Walker, op cit, p. 47

  10: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 47

  11: Ibid, pp. 47–8

  12: Ibid, p. 48

  13: Doherty, op cit, p. 213

  14: Mackenzie, op cit, p. 48

  15: Ibid

  16: John Rylands Library, Manchester; Bagshawe muniments, B3/2/38(i) & (ii); B3/2/38; Cunningham & Whalley, Queries Against Major General Kirke, Irish Sword, Vol. XVI, No. 64, pp. 208–16

  17: London Gazette, 14–17 January 1689

  18: LeFevre, The Battle of Bantry Bay, 1 May 1689, IS XVIII, No. 70, p. 1; Molloy, The French Navy and the Jacobite War in Ireland, 1689–91, IS XVIII, No. 70, p. 23

  19: Ibid, pp. 1–6; Pearsall, in Maguire (ed), op cit, p. 93; Powley, op cit, pp. 130–4;

  20: LeFevre, op cit, p. 2

  21: Ibid, pp. 2–3

  22: Ibid, pp. 8–11; Molloy, op cit, pp. 24–5; Powley, op cit, pp. 135–143

  23: LeFevre, op cit, p. 11; Powley, op cit, pp. 143–4

  24: Pearsall, op cit, p. 92

  __________

  1 A very nutritious beverage.

  2 Peter LeFevre suggests that Herbert had twenty-two ships of the line in all against Chateaurenault’s twenty-four.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Bombs and Great Bombs

  As July dawned those within the walls could not be certain what the future held for them. True, they had beaten off Rosen’s attempt to storm the city and foiled his plan to hasten their starvation by forcing them to take so many of their fellow Protestants inside the walls. The latter Jacobite plan had even had some beneficial effects for the defenders who had been able to enlist some able bodied men from the ranks of those who had been driven to the walls; these volunteers remained in Derry until the end of the siege. The latters’ presence helped steel the resolve of the garrison not to surrender, since many of the newcomers had had protections from either King James or Hamilton which provided evidence to others of the perfidy of the Jacobites.

  Of course, the defenders had tried to get some of their weakest citizens out of the city when the gallows was taken down and the hostages were allowed to return home. However, many of these individuals were obvious to the Jacobites who recognized ‘them by their colour’, a polite way of saying that they were dirtier than the average seventeenth-century citizen. Those so identified were sent back, but there were many, womenfolk among them, who were able to get away from the city. The Jacobite prisoners in the city were returned to their lodgings.1

  There is an element of black humour in the story of Andrew Robinson, a gentleman who left the city about this time but was intercepted by the Jacobites, who interrogated him. ‘Because of some imprudent expressions’ he was stripped naked and sent back. Mackenzie does not elaborate on the detail of Robinson’s ‘imprudent expressions’, but the nature of them may be surmised even after the passage of three centuries. On the other hand, Captain Beatty, one of the garrison, was able to leave with a Jacobite protection and go to live at Moneymore in the south of County Londonderry. Beatty, who was probably a native of that village, was allowed to depart because he suffered from ‘a violent flux, which rendered him useless to the garrison’. His return home was to aid his recovery which, again, makes one wonder about the policy being pursued by the Jacobites. Beatty was a soldier of some renown, having been involved in all the clashes with the Jacobites from which he had emerged with a reputation for ‘great integrity and valour’.2

  A week into July and the defenders noticed that there were few men about the Jacobite camps. This prompted Mitchelburne to send out a reconnaissance in force from the defensive lines about Windmill Hill. These reconnoitrers opened fire on the Jacobite lines and the enemy returned fire. One Jacobite offi
cer, Colonel Barker, was wounded in the hand and was later reported to have developed a fever from which he died. No major battle developed, although Jacobite reinforcements were seen marching towards the Irish line and some cavalry also made an appearance. However, the Williamites withdrew into their own lines, apparently mistaking the command given to them as being one to retreat. By then it was dusk, and a little later the defenders were surprised to hear much cheering from the various Jacobite camps. This, they learned, was to celebrate the fall of Enniskillen and appeared to be an example of psychological warfare by the Irish army trying to unsettle the defenders. The truth was that Enniskillen had beaten off the most recent Jacobite attack.3

  The information that the cheering marked the fall of Enniskillen came from Jacobite soldiers in one of many exchanges of information between the two sides. One subject of conversation reported to the garrison commanders was the Irish discontent with their French allies. No love was lost between the common Irish soldier and the French officers. Walker wrote that

  they express’d great prejudice and hatred of the French, cursing those damn’d fellows that walked in trunks (meaning their jack-boots) that had all preferments in the army that fell, and took the bread out of their mouths, and they believ’d wou’d have all the kingdom to themselves at last.4

  By 8 July the garrison’s strength had fallen to 5,520 men. Within another five days it was down to 5,313 and four days later had reduced to 5,114.5 Meanwhile, on the 11th, the Jacobites called for a parley, sending a messenger to the city to ask if the garrison would be prepared to discuss terms for surrendering the city. Since provisions were very low and most of Kirke’s ships had gone, ‘we knew not whither’, it was decided to gain some time by agreeing to the request which called for six representatives on each side. The defenders were to send the names of their representatives, together with the terms they demanded, to the Jacobites the following day. The latter would reciprocate so that each could consider the other’s terms on the 13th, a Saturday.6

  Representing the besieged were Colonels Hugh Hamilton and Thomas Lance, Captains Robert White, William Dobbin and Matthew Cocken as well as the Reverend John Mackenzie, whom Ash calls McKenny. Escorted by a group of officers of the garrison these six went out to the strand of the river where they met the Jacobite commissioners: Colonels Dominic Sheldon, Sir Neil O’Neill and Gordon O’Neill, Lieutenant Colonel Skelton, Sir Edward Vaudry and Captain Francis Morrow. The city’s commissioners were led to a tent, erected for the occasion, where a meal was provided and, according to Ash, they ‘were well entertained’. What followed was much less a day of diplomatic negotiation as a demonstration of obstinacy on the part of the garrison. The city’s six representatives had been sent out not as plenipotentiaries with freedom to manoeuvre in discussing terms but with a firm agenda that had been set by the governing Council of Fourteen (see Chapter Five, p. 115) and the commanding officers of the city’s regiments. However, to ensure that the Jacobites did not conclude that the city was ‘a confused multitude without any government’, the commissioners were to be seen as representing the governors.8

  Mackenzie describes the proceedings as a long debate which lasted until nightfall. Whether the Jacobites would have agreed that it was a debate is a matter for conjecture since those facing them had come with a shopping list that they were determined to obtain.9 One is reminded of Winston Churchill’s comment on being told that Sir Alan Brooke was to become the Chief of the Imperial General Staff in late 1941 that Brooke was a stiff-necked Ulsterman who when Churchill would thump the table and shout would simply thump the table harder and shout back. It may well be that these commissioners were the proto-stiff-necked Ulstermen, although Hamilton was under orders from James to bring about the city’s surrender no matter what the terms. In the course of the day at the table the Jacobites acceded to all the defenders’ demands save for three: the Williamites wished to hand over the city on 26 July but Hamilton insisted that this should happen by midday on the following Monday, 15 July; hostages should be kept in the city and not placed on board Kirke’s ships; and, on marching out of the city, only the officers of the garrison would be allowed to bear arms.10

  The critical point of disagreement was the date of surrender. One cannot help thinking that the defenders had no intention of surrendering at all and that their suggestion of the 26th for an end to hostilities was simply a ploy to gain more time during which, hopefully, Kirke might finally stir himself and come to their aid. For Hamilton, it was imperative that he obtain the surrender as soon as possible before Kirke moved or before another, stronger, force arrived in Ulster from England; the main body of the expeditionary force, under Schomberg, was known to be forming up. In a sense the besiegers were now also under siege since Kirke’s force at Inch presented a major threat that could be unleashed at any time. Furthermore there were the troublesome Enniskilleners who had never been content to sit back and take punishment from the Jacobites but had raided the latter’s lines of communication, striking almost as far as Dublin, and who might also strike north towards Derry. Combined with an attack from Inch, that would place the Jacobites in a dire situation. Thus Hamilton was as anxious as James to see the garrison of Derry accept terms and march out.

  It is much less clear why Hamilton should have displayed obstinacy about the hostages and the carrying of arms by soldiers marching out of the city. We have already looked at the conventions of siege warfare in Chapter Four and noted that what the defenders demanded was within those conventions. However, these were matters that could be resolved with relative ease, and it may be that Hamilton was giving the impression of being difficult because he felt this necessary. Equally, he might well have realized that the Williamites were playing for time and decided to play them at their own game. We shall never know, especially as the matter soon became academic.

  The Williamite commissioners returned to the city that night with a promise that they would give the Jacobites an answer by noon on the Sunday. Mackenzie recorded that this time, in which to reach a decision and deliver an answer, had been obtained ‘with great difficulty’. On their return the commissioners made a report to the council and a meeting was arranged for 8 o’clock next morning to ‘consider what answer they should return’.11

  But there had been another development that involved George Walker. While the commissioners had been at their meeting with the Jacobites, a small boy had brought a message from the ships to the city. This had been written by a Lieutenant David Mitchell, a soldier who had left the city on 10 May, and included the information that Kirke had sent some of his force to encamp at Inch.12 Walker decided to amend the letter by changing the details of the size of the force sent to Inch; he increased this to 4,000 horse and 9,000 infantry. It was all the more surprising, therefore, that, on the Saturday night, Walker should advocate surrender by Monday, as Hamilton had demanded. Others of the Council of Fourteen pointed out to him that there was a strong Williamite force, said to be some 13,000 men, on Inch and that this force could reach the city in less than a day. There was, therefore, no reason to surrender when such a reinforcement lay so close. It was then that Walker was obliged to admit that he had amended the letter.13

  When the council met on Sunday morning there was a debate about the course of action to be followed after which it was decided that ‘unless the enemy would give us time until the 26th of July, and secure the hostages in the ships, we would not surrender’. Surprisingly, Walker continued to argue against this which must have aroused among the other members of the council considerable suspicion about his motives. On the other point in dispute, it was agreed to allow the commissioners to debate the manner of surrender and how the garrison should march out. And so the commissioners, as agreed, went out to meet the Jacobites at noon. But their proposals met with refusal and the truce that had been agreed had come to an end.14

  Mackenzie took this as a sign of providence:

  So evidently that gracious God (who had determined our deliverance, and to wh
ose all-comprehending eye that particular season of it that would most illustrate His own glory was obvious) infatuate the counsels and harden the hearts of our enemies. Had they accepted the proposals, the city had been unavoidably surrendered, and we could not have held out three or four days longer than the time we desired.15

  Although Mackenzie makes no mention of the Jacobite reaction following the breakdown of the truce, Ash tells us that the commissioners had hardly returned to their own lines before the bombardment of the city was renewed, with the Jacobites choosing ‘to vent their malice in playing bombs and great bombs against the city, which blessed be God, did little mischief.16 Later that night, following instructions in the letter from Mitchell, seven rounds were fired from the cathedral’s tower, followed by a further three at midnight while a lantern was hung from the flagpole. Throughout that day some eighteen mortar rounds were fired into the city.17

  The abortive negotiations led to further activity from the Jacobites. On the 15th, eight bombs were fired into the city and, in the evening, some 2,000 Jacobite troops marched to the rising ground beside the Foyle to the south of the city. An attempt to take Windmill Hill seemed to be underway. Orders were issued immediately to some of the garrison to march out and meet the attackers. This brought the attack to a halt. The Jacobites then fired twelve mortar rounds at the Windmill but without killing anyone. Then the cannon emplaced across the river at Tamneymore opened fire on the trenches south of the city, killing a soldier from Captain Gordon’s company. Finally, the Jacobite troops marched off, although more bombs were fired after their departure.18

  The Jacobites returned to the attack next day, during which their mortarmen fired four rounds into the city. Much more serious was a fresh attack on the Butcher’s Gate launched, it seems, at about 10 o’clock in the morning. Although the assault was made by a small party of Jacobites, the defenders’ positions were unmanned and were quickly in Jacobite hands. However, the new occupants were soon under fire from the walls, to which bombardment the Williamites added stones ‘out of the old walls’. Once again the Jacobites were forced to withdraw, having lost some men dead and one captured.19 Ash states that this attack occurred on the 17th1 and that six Jacobites were killed; he names the man taken prisoner as one Robinson who, two days later, took an oath to William and Mary and was given his liberty.20 Another alarm had been created by the approach of two Jacobite regiments to the outworks on Windmill Hill, but a deployment of the garrison, ordered by Mitchelburne, resulted in the Jacobite units turning about.21