He landed his stores and munitions at the Anse au Foulon, Wolfe's landing-place, and gradually pushed forward his lines, while the English position in front of him steadily {318} grew stronger, and in the besieged garrison confidence took the place of despondency. A storm on the river, it was reported in the city, cost the French guns, provisions, and ammunition. Bourlamaque, who, as an engineer by training, was placed in charge of the siege, was wounded; and when, on the forenoon of May 9, a strange ship sailed up the river into the basin of Quebec, and hoisted the English colours, little doubt could be left that any attempt to regain the city would be in vain. The ship in question was the _Lowestoft_ frigate, and she brought 'the agreeable intelligence of a British fleet being masters of the St. Lawrence, and nigh at hand to sustain us.'[32] The news, in Captain Knox's words, was as grateful as when the garrison of Vienna, hard pressed by the Turks, beheld Sobieski's army marching to their relief. [Footnote 32: Knox, vol. ii, p. 310.] [Sidenote: _Retreat of Levis._] But one swallow does not make a summer, and some days passed before any other British ships appeared. On May 11 the French batteries opened, answered by 150 guns from Quebec: and bombardment went on without much damage, until, on the evening of the fifteenth, the _Vanguard_ ship of war and the _Diana_ frigate anchored before Quebec. The next morning the British ships passed up the river at flood tide, and attacked a small French squadron above the city. The French commander, Vauquelin, made a brave fight, but his few little vessels were nearly all destroyed. On that night and on the seventeenth, the French were in full retreat with the English at their heels. Guns, scaling ladders, baggage, ammunition, sick and wounded, were left behind. The siege of Quebec was raised, the English, after the disastrous battle of April 28, not having lost more than thirty men; and Murray, by his brave and able defence, made more than amends for his previous reverse. [Sidenote: _Reception in England of the news of Murray's defeat and subsequent relief._]