Siege of Derry (1689): The Apprentice Boys and the Walled City

The Siege of Derry was the 105-day blockade of the walled city of Derry, also called Londonderry, by the army of James II in 1689. Crowded with Protestant refugees and starving, the city held out until relief ships broke through a boom on the River Foyle, and the siege became a founding story of Ulster Protestant identity.

Background

After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II lost England to William of Orange, but Ireland, where most of the population was Catholic, remained largely loyal to him under his lord deputy, the Earl of Tyrconnell. Protestants in Ulster, many descended from the English and Scottish settlers of the plantation era, feared massacre and looked to William.

Derry had been rebuilt by London livery companies in the early 17th century and was protected by stone walls completed in 1619. On 7 December 1688, as a Catholic regiment under the Earl of Antrim approached, thirteen apprentice boys seized the keys and shut the Ferryquay Gate. The city declared for William and Mary.

Derry was not alone. Enniskillen in County Fermanagh also refused to admit a Jacobite garrison, and Protestant associations formed across Ulster. But when Jacobite troops defeated a Protestant force at the Break of Dromore in March 1689, thousands of refugees streamed towards Derry, the strongest refuge in the north-west.

The siege begins

James landed in Ireland in March 1689 and his army moved north. The governor, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Lundy, considered the city indefensible and favoured terms. When James himself rode up to the walls on 18 April 1689, defenders fired on his party with cries of “No surrender”. Lundy was deposed and escaped in disguise.

Command passed to two joint governors, Major Henry Baker and the Reverend George Walker, an Anglican clergyman. After Baker died of fever in June, Colonel John Mitchelburne succeeded him. Inside the walls were a garrison of perhaps 7,000 to 8,000 men and a large number of refugees, bringing the population to an estimated 30,000.

Life inside the walls

The Jacobite army, led at different times by Richard Hamilton and the French marshal Conrad von Rosen, lacked heavy siege guns, so it relied on bombardment, attacks on outworks and, above all, starvation. Defenders fought off assaults, including heavy fighting at Windmill Hill, and made sorties. Gunners on the walls used cannon that had been given to the city by the London companies decades earlier, some of which can still be seen on the walls today.

Food ran out. By July people were eating horses, dogs, cats, rats and tallow, and prices for scraps of food recorded by Walker became famous. Disease spread through the overcrowded streets. In early July Rosen drove Protestant civilians from the surrounding countryside up to the walls to pressure the garrison, but the tactic was abandoned after the defenders threatened to hang Jacobite prisoners.

Relief by the Mountjoy

To stop supplies reaching the city by water, the besiegers built a boom of timber and chain across the Foyle. An English relief fleet under Major-General Percy Kirke arrived in June but waited for weeks. Finally, on the evening of 28 July 1689, the armed merchant ship Mountjoy, followed by the Phoenix and covered by the frigate HMS Dartmouth, rammed and broke the boom.

The Mountjoy’s captain, Micaiah Browning, a native of Derry, was killed in the action. The ships unloaded food at the quay, and within days the Jacobite army burned its camps and marched away.

Timeline

• 1688, 7 December: Apprentice boys shut the gates against Antrim’s regiment.
• 1689, 12 March: James II lands at Kinsale in Ireland.
• 1689, 18 April: James appears before the walls and is fired upon; the siege begins.
• 1689, 30 June: Governor Henry Baker dies of fever.
• 1689, early July: Rosen drives civilians beneath the walls.
• 1689, 28 July: The Mountjoy and Phoenix break the boom and relieve the city.
• 1689, 31 July to 1 August: The Jacobite army withdraws.

Legacy

The defence of Derry kept a foothold in Ulster for William’s forces and was followed by his victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Walker became a celebrity in England but was killed at the Boyne.

The siege became central to Ulster Protestant memory. The Apprentice Boys of Derry hold parades every August to mark the relief and every December to mark the shutting of the gates, when an effigy of Lundy is burned. “No surrender” became a loyalist slogan, while many Catholics and nationalists saw these marches as triumphalist, a tension that fed into the Troubles. Even the city’s name, Derry or Londonderry, remains politically sensitive.

Why it matters

The Siege of Derry helped decide the Williamite war in Ireland and became one of the most powerful symbols in Irish history. Its walls, which were never breached, still stand as the most complete city walls in Ireland.