Free Born Fighting by James Webb Page A

Covenanters had done fifty years before when Charles I had ordered them to accept the Anglican faith.
    No surrender.
    Londonderry’s defense was not simply a passive affair. In addition to their individual weapons and the artillery that lined the city walls, Protestant ground forces made frequent raids, patrols, and ambushes outside the gates. Col. Adam Murray, a Scot who commanded the military forces, led several successful cavalry campaigns against the French and Irish besiegers. In late April the French general Maumont was killed in one such attack. In another, Murray made a brief, false attack on Jacobite forces (followers of James II) at Pennyburn Mill and then lured French cavalry forces into a deadly ambush set up by his infantry as he retreated. Other battles were fought over key pieces of terrain, including two at Windmill Hill and one at the Butcher’s Gate.
    In an effort symbolic of larger issues between England and the Ulster Protestants, the vaunted English navy did not enshrine itself with honor. On June 8 a British warship, the
Greyhound
, attempted to run the Jacobite blockade on the River Foyle and was badly damaged by French and Irish gunfire coming from Fort Culmore, a key spot above the river. Initially running aground, the damaged
Greyhound
soon abandoned the besieged Protestants, limping back to England.
    On June 11 a larger naval relief force along with soldiers and provisions arrived within sight of the city’s towers at the mouth of the Lough Foyle. Seeing the damage done to the
Greyhound
and learning that the besieging army had laid booms of logs and chains across the mouth of the river, the English commander, Maj. Gen. Percy Kirke, hesitated. The French and Irish guns at Fort Culmore were trained on the booms, prepared for a barrage if the relief ships attempted to break through. As Derry’s defenders watched from above, Kirke turned his task force around and sailed off to the Lough Swilly, on the other side of a peninsula a few miles west of the city. And there he stayed. For six weeks, during the worst part of the siege, the English relief force remained encamped on Inch Island in Lough Swilly while the city’s defenders absorbed a heavy pounding from the siege guns and began dying in droves from starvation.
    Anger and bitterness filled the city. Their only hope for survival rested a few miles away as they continued to die from enemy fire and began eating dogs and rats to survive. This anger was matched by many of the soldiers and sailors in the relief force itself, some of whom were Ulster natives.
    Finally the duke of Schomberg, King William’s military commander in Ireland, sent a harsh note to General Kirke, ordering him to lift the siege. On the evening of July 28 the relief force pushed forward toward the city. Darkness was falling as they entered Lough Foyle. The tide was running with them. Three supply ships, covered by the heavy guns of the British warship HMS
Dartmouth
, moved against the boom. The lead ship, the
Mountjoy
, stalled as it tried to ram the booms and was taken under heavy fire by the guns at Fort Culmore. Swaying in the current, the
Mountjoy
ran aground, but as it returned fire the recoil from its guns dislodged it from the riverbank, floating it again. Its commander, Londonderry native Capt. Michael Browning, was killed while commanding the guns on the main deck. But soon a party of sailors on a longboat cut the chains and broke the booms. And finally, under cover of darkness, the three supply ships made their way to the city’s walls.
    The siege was lifted. Two days later the French and Irish soldiers, themselves exhausted, began to withdraw. James had been defeated in a symbolic standoff that he had personally initiated. But ironically, the victory only widened the rift between the predominantly English Anglicans and the principally Scottish Presbyterians who had fought alongside them.
    The Reverend George Walker, an Anglican minister widely hailed as one of the