The absence of a fleet, the entire navy having gone over to William, placed James at a great disadvantage, and explains why there were no sea fights of importance in British and Irish waters during this war. Isolated French squadrons could not be expected to make headway against the united navies of Britain and Holland. William, on the contrary, had the seas wide open to him, and, on June 14, 1690, he landed at Carrickfergus with reinforcements and supplies for his army in Ireland, and accompanied by the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, Prince George of Denmark, the Duke of Ormond, the Earls of Portland, Manchester, Oxford, and Scarborough; General Mackay, General Douglas, and many other warriors well known to British and Continental fame. He established headquarters at Belfast and caused a muster of all his forces, which showed him to be at the head of about 40,000 men, mostly veterans, and made up of contingents from Scandinavia, Holland, Switzerland, Brandenburg, England, Scotland, Ulster, together with the exiled Huguenot regiments of France and the Anglo-Irish battalions of the Pale. Allowing for detachments, William had under him an army of, at least, 36,000 effective men, officered by the best military talent of the period. James, according to all Irish and some British authorities, commanded a force of 17,000 Irish, of whom alone the cavalry, numbering, probably, from five to six thousand men, were considered thoroughly trained. In addition, he had 6,000 well-appointed French infantry, under De Lauzun, which brought his total up to some 23,000 men, with only twelve pieces of cannon. William, on the other hand, possessed a powerful and well-appointed artillery. Once again, James was advised not to oppose his comparatively weak and ill-disciplined army to an encounter with the veteran host of William, and again the advantages of the defensive line of the Shannon were pointed out to him. But he would not listen to the voice of prudence, and marched northward to meet his rival, almost immediately after learning of his debarkation at Carrickfergus. The Stuart army reached Dundalk about June 22, when William was reported to be at Newry. His scouts were soon seen on the neighboring heights, and the Franco-Irish forces fell back on the river Boyne, and took post on the southern bank, within a few miles of Drogheda. The Irish camp was pitched immediately below the hill of Donore and near the small village of Oldbridge, in the obtuse salient, pointing northwestward, formed by the second bend in the river in its course from Slane—about six miles from Oldbridge—to the sea. In the chart of the battle, published by the Rev. George Story, King William’s chaplain, in 1693, three strong batteries are shown in front of the right of the Irish army, on the south bank of the Boyne, and one protecting its left opposite to the point where the Mattock rivulet falls into the main river. But no Irish account mentions these batteries.