On the first day (Palm Sunday) Pelham ordered a party of troops to cross to the sea-wall, where they were pinned down by gunfire and had boulders hurled at them from the battlements. The troops threw up assault ladders, which the Spanish halberdiers pushed away. The Earl of Ormond described seeing the sea-channel fill with wreckage as the sides of the castle-rock became slippery with blood. Pelham was hit by a ricochet and jeered at by the defenders, but there was no pause in the bombardment.