Derry and Limerick
side floated her again. Her Captain, Browning, had been killed, but once more she was sent against the boom, and this time crashed right through. As she slowly forged ahead, still firing, a hoarse cheer went up from the city. It was the Phœnix, however, that, at ten o'clock that night, first reached the quay. Torches waved, bonfires blazed, cannon roared, the church bells pealed, and the triumphant yells of the populace echoed across the Foyle. Then for two days longer the Jacobites clung to their trenches, and, on the night of the 31st of July, decamped by the light of their blazing huts.
So, after 105 days, ended the historic defence. By sword and disease Derry had lost over 3,000 men and the besiegers some 8,000. Here had been a rough "camp of exercise" for two raw armies, and both sides paid dearly for the lessons of "the ridiculous siege," as A Jacobite Narrative terms it.
Courage and endurance both sides had shown. Strategy could hardly be expected from either, and little was displayed. The Jacobite want of artillery was, to some extent, counterbalanced by the Williamite lack of cavalry. Though many of the Jacobite officers were professional military men, French, English, and Scotch, as well as Irish, a large proportion of them were but
224
