A Handful of Heroes, Rorke's Drift

Facts, Myths and Legends

Katie Stossel

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781473828223
• eBook ISBN: 9781473864115
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

A compelling account of the courageous standoff between 150 British troops and more than 3,000 Zulu warriors during the Anglo-Zulu War.
 
Thanks to newly discovered letters and documents, A Handful of Heroes, Rorke's Drift updates the history of the Defense of Rorke's Drift, which will forever be one of the most celebrated British feats of arms. Remarkably after such prolonged historical scrutiny, the author's research proves that there is yet more to discover about this famous incident of the Zulu War in 1879, and her superbly researched book reveals a number of myths that have distorted what happened during the gallant defense of the small Mission Station.
 
This fascinating and highly readable account goes on to examine in detail the famous Chard Report, which has long been relied on by historians and authors. Doubts emerge as to its accuracy, and evidence is provided which suggests the report's author was coerced by a senior officer in order to protect the latter's reputation. Likewise the letters of August Hammar, a young Swedish visitor to the Mission, put Reverend Otto Witt's false account into perspective.
 
These and other revelations make A Handful of Heroes, Rorke's Drift a fresh and important addition to the bibliography of this legendary Zulu War engagement.
 
"Though the book reviewed here should not be your first dip into the history of the Zulu War, it is an essential one. It provides readers with a wider understanding of the events and their aftermath . . . The author does the job here with style and grace." — War History Online

Chapter 1

Prelude to Rorke’s Drift

This unexpected defeat by the Zulu army at Isandlwana would shake Victorian Britain and its proud army.

(James Grant, British Battles on Land and Sea)

In 1878, Rorke’s Drift was an insignificant river crossing point into Zululand with a small scattering of nearby huts used only by the occasional trader. Apart from the Boundary Commission that sat for five weeks at Rorke’s Drift in early 1878 to take evidence of cross-border issues between the Boers and Zulus in northern Zululand, the existence of the location was then unknown to the outside world. Otherwise, little had ever happened in the immediate area. Until the British annexation of the Transvaal in 1877 relationships between the British and Zulus had been more friendly than not. The British had hitherto supported Zulu claims against the Transvaal Boer farmers encroaching from the north into Zululand, but did nothing to intervene until Britain took control of the Transvaal. Boer citizens, previously viewed as ‘foreigners’, then became de facto British subjects who demanded that the British authorities protect them from the Zulus. British officials in South Africa took what they thought was the ‘easy option’ and decided to support the Boers.

Rather than rush into action, the British deferred the problem by setting up a Boundary Commission; this was at the persistent request of the Governor of Natal, Sir Henry Bulwer, a long-time friend of the Zulu people. The commission, which included Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Durnford of the Royal Engineers, was instructed to adjudicate on title to the disputed territory, to which King Cetshwayo agreed. With discreet pressure applied in the right quarter, it was presumed by the British authorities that the commission would find in favour of the Boers.

For five weeks the commission met under canvas at Rorke’s Drift to consider both Boer and Zulu representations, which included several unsigned Boer documents and numerous fraudulent claims. The commission focused only on legal issues: who owned the land prior to the dispute and whether any land under dispute had been properly purchased or ceded.

No boundary line had ever been agreed between the Zulus and Boers but the commission acknowledged that, over many years, the Boers had steadily forced the Zulus from their rich northern pasturelands. The boundary commissioners unanimously concluded that the Zulus had never lost dominion over the disputed territory, and that it was still properly within the boundary of Zululand. The commission’s unexpected verdict was delivered in July 1878 to a furious Sir (Henry) Bartle Frere, an autocratic politician who liked to play God with the Zulus, who merely hid the report in his desk.¹⁰ Believing in their own invincibility, and careless of the Boundary Commission Report, Frere’s officials instead demanded that King Cetshwayo should surrender the large swathes of territory to the north of Rorke’s Drift which had been seized by Boer farmers. Sensing the opportunity for an easy military adventure, Lord Chelmsford, the British military commander in South Africa, supported the decision.

On 28 July, an incident occurred which gifted Frere the opportunity to agitate widespread anti-Zulu sentiment. Two sons of Sihayo, a local but important Zulu chief, crossed the river border at Rorke’s Drift to restrain two of their father’s absconding wives on suspicion of their adultery. The terrified women were duly apprehended and dragged back across the border, then put to death by having their skulls smashed with knobkerries in accordance with established Zulu tradition. Throughout Natal, the incident received officially orchestrated publicity, vastly amplified in order to encourage public fear of Zulu militarism and to foment antagonism against King Cetshwayo. With the full support of Lord Chelmsford, Frere authorized the preparation of plans to invade Zululand and began to prepare an ultimatum which he knew the Zulu king could not accept.¹¹

From Fort Pine, just 4 miles upstream from Rorke’s Drift Mission, the locally recruited Buffalo Border Guard (BBG) was called upon to watch across the border for signs of any aggressive Zulu response. Fort Pine had been built in early 1878 by local white farmers as a laager (originally meaning a defensive circle of wagons), to protect their families should the rapidly failing relationship between the British and Zulus ever deteriorate to the point of military action. It was constructed as a stone fortress with twelve-foot high walls and became the headquarters of the BBG with rooms for twenty-five officers and men, adequate stabling and magazines for ammunition and a deep freshwater well within the compound. By Christmas 1878, the fort was fully manned and in communication along the border with the Newcastle Mounted Rifles to the north and the Natal Carbineers. It was a measure of Chelmsford’s overwhelming confidence in his army that, regardless of the good accessibility and position of Fort Pine overlooking the river into Zululand, he chose instead the nearby wide-open location of Rorke’s Drift for his invasion form-up point. The location also overlooked the river boundary with Zululand, had just two small thatched buildings and was run by a Swedish missionary, Otto Witt.

Britain at the end of December 1878 was totally unaware of events unfolding in South Africa. The country competently commanded a fine Empire, standing at a high point in its history and enjoying an enviable position in world affairs. Britain was a mighty industrial nation and its cities were modern and efficient with utilities and a network of up-to-date communications which were the best in Europe. Nevertheless, the government was preparing to commit its modern army in Afghanistan which perturbed no one, least of all the country’s politicians. What they did not know was that their officials in South Africa were on the verge of invading a small and previously friendly black nation that still lived in mud huts and which had been at peace for thirty-seven years. In South Africa, few outside Chelmsford’s immediate circle of senior military officers knew of the ignominious failure of the recent British expeditionary force against the Pedi tribe, neighbours of the Zulus, who had decimated the small British invasion column in a series of sharp actions. This ‘hushing up’ of a local defeat was fortuitous as Britain was, so she thought, the greatest power in the world, both economically and militarily, while as for the British army, its profession was fighting wars and its well-equipped troops were used to easy victories. The glory of British arms across the Empire was at an all-time high and not since Waterloo had any power contested Britain’s right to rule as and where she chose.

Towards the end of 1878, British politicians under Sir Bartle Frere finalized their plan to order Lord Chelmsford to lead British troops already stationed in the country against the Zulus. The pretext was that the Zulu army posed an increasing threat to white supremacy in South Africa, which it did not. The British in South Africa wanted war, but the Zulu king did not. King Cetshwayo was quietly pro-British and no threat had ever been made against neighbouring British-controlled Natal, nor had any European trader ever been molested in Zululand. Inner Zululand was still uncharted and was known to only a few hardy traders. However, British commercial enterprises across South Africa, mainly mining, desperately needed Zulu manpower, which Cetshwayo had refused. With the Zulus defeated, local British logic held that this untapped supply of labour could be cheaply employed.

With the successful conclusion of the Ninth Frontier War, Chelmsford willingly followed Frere’s political agenda for the invasion of Zululand; it would be an easy victory. Chelmsford had initially planned to invade with five independent columns but a lack of resources forced him to reduce this to three offensive and two defensive columns. He then decided to accompany the Centre Column in person, which effectively deprived Colonel Glyn, the designated commander of the column, of any responsibility including for Glyn’s own regiment, the 1st/24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment, which was the backbone of the column. Friction consequently developed between Chelmsford’s and Glyn’s staff officers.

On 11 January 1879, the main British invasion force, spearheaded by the Centre Column, embarked on the disastrous invasion of Zululand. This force of 4,709 officers and men included both battalions of the 24th, referred to hereafter as the 1/24th and the 2/24th, each with a strength of some 600 fit and experienced men together with their allies, the Natal Native Contingent. The column had advanced the 150 miles cross-country from Durban to its supply depot at Rorke’s Drift, nestling under the Oskarsberg Hill which overlooked the picturesque river border with Zululand. The force crossed the river on the engineers’ two ponts and, after a preliminary skirmish against a small group of old Zulus, made camp 10 miles inside Zululand at Isandlwana Hill. This halt was to enable the over-confident Chelmsford to bring up all his supplies from Rorke’s Drift before seeking out the gathering Zulu army and destroying it. Although this act of war against a friendly neighbour was unauthorized by the home government Frere and Chelmsford believed they could secure Zululand before news of the invasion, and their expected victory, reached England.

At the time of the British invasion, Rorke’s Drift boasted two small buildings set on a slight rise overlooking the tranquil river scene just a quarter mile distant. These consisted of the incumbent Reverend Otto Witt’s stone block and thatched house, about to become Surgeon Reynolds’ temporary hospital housing thirty patients, and an adjacent small combined schoolroom and storehouse which would store the invading column’s weather-susceptible supplies and ammunition, most of which accompanied the invasion force on 11 January. On 22 January, the detachment left behind to guard the river crossing and two store buildings included Lieutenant Bromhead, the youngest son of Sir Edmund de Gonville Bromhead, Bart, of Thurlby Hall in Lincolnshire, and 100 soldiers of ‘B’ Company 2/24th. His senior NCO was 24-year-old Colour Sergeant Bourne, a 5ft 6in former agricultural worker from Sussex who, on enlisting under-age, shone out from other recruits by displaying above average intelligence – to the extent that he had received his three most recent promotions during the preceding three months. An engineer officer, Lieutenant Chard, had unexpectedly arrived at Rorke’s Drift the day before, his men having been left at Durban, suffering from the effects of inoculations. On arrival at Rorke’s Drift he discreetly kept away from Bromhead’s detachment, as engineer officers were still not considered by their regular army colleagues as ‘proper officers’. All were under the command of Major Spalding, the officer in charge of the advancing column’s line of communications, supported by Captain Stephenson, a colonial officer whose 300 black auxiliaries of the Natal Native Contingent (NNC) were used for labouring duties and moving stores.

The number of NNC troops present at Rorke’s Drift before the battle was mentioned by a number of those present including Colour Sergeant Bourne, Private Hook, Chaplain Smith and Lieutenant Chard in both his official report of the action and his longer letter to Queen Victoria. Estimates of their strength vary between Bourne’s 100, Smith’s 350, and Harry Lugg, of the Natal Mounted Police, who believed there were 2,000 of them. Only Chard gives us the name of their officer, Captain Stephenson. The NNC had been camped near the Mission since 11 January, but auxiliary black troops would not have mixed or camped alongside regular and colonial-born irregular troops due to their noisy chanting and dancing at all hours.

The NNC were something of an after-thought as far as the British were concerned. Many of the African groups within the British colony had a history of antagonism towards the Zulu kingdom. Some had resisted the Zulus since the days of King Shaka and had escaped to Natal, but there was still a general suspicion that once mobilized and armed, the Africans would prove to be a threat to the stability of white supremacy within the colony; it was this view which was taken up by the local press to endorse the British invasion of Zululand. Also, the lieutenant-governor, Sir Henry Bulwer, was worried that any use of Natal blacks against the Zulus would damage post-war relationships for generations to come. Nevertheless, General Orders authorizing the raising of the NNC were published on 23 November 1878 and since the war began on 11 January 1879, just six weeks were allowed to raise, organize and train the contingent, though they were generally viewed by many as the ‘untrained untrainable’.¹²

Most NNC officers were appointed from colonial volunteers who had settled in South Africa. Where possible, senior ranks were filled from men who had previous experience in the British Army. A number of battalion commandants had once been officers in British regiments, but most NNC captains and lieutenants were recruited from among the settler gentry and adventurers on the Eastern Cape Frontier; a number were European and spoke poor English such as Lieutenant Ardendorff and Corporal Schiess, the latter a Swiss national who would shortly be decorated with the Victoria Cross. A few could speak some Xhosa or the Mpondo dialect – hardly any spoke Zulu. The NCOs were usually recruited from the unemployed or local taverns and by all accounts were a rough lot.

The NNC would be pitched into the war before the men had come to know, or learned to trust, their officers. Many were bullied by their NCOs, who issued incomprehensible orders then used their fists to enforce them, and who openly referred to the native troops with utter contempt. Most NNC were distinguished by nothing more than a red rag worn around their heads and only one in ten, usually the designated black NCOs, were issued with firearms; the rest carried their traditional spears and sticks.

The 3rd Regiment NNC, consisting mostly of men from the abaThembu, amaChunu and amaBhele chiefdoms, with a contingent of displaced Zulus, the iziGqoza, was appointed to support the Centre Column of Chelmsford’s three invasion columns which were to cross into Zululand at Rorke’s Drift. The NNC assembled behind the Helpmakaar range, not far from the modern village of Pomeroy, where groups from the various chiefdoms came together before joining Chelmsford at Rorke’s Drift. Helpmakaar consisted of just two small stone buildings built to support the German Pastor, the Reverend Jacob Dohne of the nearby chapel. Excommunicated by his previous congregation at Vryheid, Dohne was taken in by the local farmer to minister to the needs of the scattered local white community. By Christmas 1878, the handful of civilians at Helpmakaar had taken up temporary residence at Fort Pine, partly for their protection but mainly to rent their two cottages to the British who were moving their invasion supplies into the immediate area.

On 11 January, the Centre Column crossed into Zululand at Rorke’s Drift and left a detachment of NNC at the Mission, apparently to assist with the movement of stores and help guard the ponts at the Drift. They were commanded by Captain William Stephenson, ‘a gentleman from the Cape Colony [who] spoke the language perfectly’, but records reveal there were no lieutenants or sergeants present, and only three corporals.¹³ The weather conditions across Zululand had not been favourable for the British preparations, Chelmsford wrote on 13 January to his commander in the north, Colonel Wood,

I see no chance of our supplies for seven days. Road near camp over a swamp must be drained and supplies must be stored at Rorke’s Drift; at present there are hardly any there. The rain latterly all over Natal has been incessant and the roads are reported as impassable.

The previous evening of 21 January, the Zulus who had been watching the build-up at Isandlwana tricked Chelmsford into believing the Zulu army was approaching his position from the east, the direction of their capital at Ulundi. After dark the Zulus lit numerous decoy camp fires in the distant hills – taken in, Chelmsford ordered half his force off towards the fires ready to make battle at dawn. But the Zulu army had already slipped unobserved behind him, into a hidden valley just 4 miles to the flank of the unprotected Isandlwana camp, leaving Chelmsford’s force 12 miles distant with no Zulus in sight. Clearly, Chelmsford had dismissed an earlier warning from an officer well used to fighting in South Africa. General Sir John Michel had written in a letter to Chelmsford,

I commend you not to try night surprises. Ask Brownlee about my last, he was with me. It was most dangerous, and I ought to have suffered for it.

He finished his letter:

Yours, my dear Thesiger [Chelmsford] is a command of great danger to your reputation. The two best Generals, Sir P. Maitland and Sir H. Smith, were dismissed.

He also sent Chelmsford a memorandum offering further advice, ‘Your rear and perhaps your flanks will be attacked.’¹⁴

After sunrise on 22 January, Chard rode the 10 miles to Isandlwana camp to receive his orders. None had been waiting for him on his arrival at Rorke’s Drift and there was nothing of significance for him to do at the Mission. Meanwhile, those left behind by the invading column at Rorke’s Drift settled down to a quiet spell of light duties that involved guarding the drift and makeshift hospital. At about 7.00am Chard arrived at Isandlwana and to his chagrin found there were no orders for him but, while taking breakfast in the officers’ mess, he stood with a number of officers calmly observing many thousand Zulus massing less than a mile distant along the edge of the Nqutu plateau overlooking the British position. One party of Zulus broke away from the main group and began making off towards Natal. Concerned for those back at Rorke’s Drift, he rode back to alert Spalding. On receiving the news, Spalding hastily set off for reinforcements he knew were overdue from Helpmakaar, 10 miles further inland.

Chapter 2

The Defences at Rorke’s Drift

Few Zulu War historians or commentators have given credit for any preparations for the pre-battle defence of Rorke’s Drift prior to the invasion of Zululand. Indeed, it is a keystone of the myth that the garrison was unprepared for a Zulu attack until, with less than an hour’s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Prelude to Rorke’s Drift
• Chapter 2: The Defences at Rorke’s Drift
• Chapter 3: A Few Hours Before – the Battle of Isandlwana
• Chapter 4: The Battle For Rorke’s Drift
• Chapter 5: The Experiences of August Hammar and Reverend Otto Witt
• Chapter 6: Was He There? Bogus Rorke’s Drift Claimants
• Chapter 7: The Rorke’s Drift Awards
• Chapter 8: The Welsh Myth
• Chapter 9: Archaeology
• Chapter 10: A Psychological Review of the Chard Report
• Chapter 11: The Chard Reports and Scientific Analysis
• Chapter 12: Sister Janet at Rorke’s Drift
• Chapter 13: Rorke’s Drift Today
• Appendices
• Notes