while many of the dubliners may never have returned, gerald's account and a mediaeval french text popularly known as "the song of dermot and the earl" state that, about six months later, the deposed king of dublin, ascall mac ragnaill (d. 1171), launched a sea-borne assault on the town with a force that numbered either sixty or one hundred ships respectively. although mac turcaill's men successfully made landfall near the town, the sources indicate that his forces were utterly crushed by the norman defenders, and that he was himself captured and beheaded. the french text specifically states that there was manx involvement in the assault. in gerald's version of the events, affreca's father supplied thirty ships to an unsuccessful later-attempt at ousting the normans from dublin. in the words of gerald, "their fear of the threat of english domination, inspired by the successes of the english, made the men of the isles act all the more quickly, and with the wind in the northwest they immediately sailed about thirty ships full of warriors into the harbour of the liffey".