Rorke's Drift

by Adrian Greaves

  The Zulu force consisted of elements of the iNdluyengwe, uThulwana, iNdlondlo and uDloko ibutho and collectively they crossed the Buffalo river some 4 miles below Rorke’s Drift. The river was in flood and running fast through this stretch; it was studded with rocks between the precipitous sides of the ravine and it was here, no doubt, that the Zulus jumped across. Having successfully crossed the river they then advanced along the Natal bank and climbed onto the plateau behind Rorke’s Drift where they rested and took snuff. It is popularly believed that King Cetshwayo had ordered his generals to stay out of Natal but this belief overlooks Cetshwayo’s address to his army.4 Either way, orders in the heat of battle and those that went against the warriors’ immediate instincts were often disregarded during the Zulu War. After all, three hours earlier, the Zulus had attacked the position at Isandlwana in defiance of the king’s orders not to attack the British when encamped; crossing the border into Natal against orders was no worse, especially if serious damage could be caused along the border and Natal cattle looted. The commander of the approaching Zulus, Prince Dabulamanzi, was certainly more concerned with gaining glory than obeying his half-brother the king. Having crossed the border into Natal, Dabulamanzi’s force was intent on some serious plunder and ‘spear washing’ to compensate for not having participated at the battle of Isandlwana. They could still gain prestige and glory by killing any Natal natives they came across between Helpmekaar and the river, and by burning their farms and plundering their cattle. Rorke’s Drift was incidental to Dabulamanzi’s plan – the garrison was not his main objective, it just happened to be in his way. After taking snuff and quenching their thirst, the Zulus divided into several groups; some headed off to plunder towards the distant hills near Helpmekaar. The main body continued towards Rorke’s Drift where they came across the recently abandoned farm belonging to a white farmer, Edward Woodroffe; this was burnt to the ground.

  Meanwhile, just as Witt and his party rode back to the mission station, Chard was enjoying his afternoon rest on the river bank. Chard’s peace was disturbed when at about 3.30 p.m. he noticed two horsemen galloping towards the drift from the direction of Isandlwana. The pair plunged their horses into the river shouting to Chard that the Zulus were approaching; the two riders were Lieutenants Vane and Adendorff of the NNH, both being survivors of the battle at Isandlwana; this unbelievable news was the first intimation Chard had of the disaster at Isandlwana. There can be little doubt that Chard was bemused by the news and before he had time to react, another messenger arrived from Bromhead suggesting that Chard should strike his tents, inspan his wagon, load his tools and return immediately to the mission station. It transpired that a native horseman of the Edendale Contingent had just delivered a note to Bromhead, written by Captain Essex who had survived Isandlwana, reporting the loss of the British camp to the Zulus. Chard dispatched Vane and Adendorff with his reply to Bromhead stating that he would return to the Post once he had collected his working party. As Adendorff rode off, he called back to Chard that he would stay on at the mission station and fight.

  Chard then had a water cart filled with water and, with what tools he could load on his wagon, set off to join Bromhead. At the mission station, Lieutenants Vane and Adendorff had arrived just as Dalton and Bromhead were in deep discussion; both Natal Native Horse (NNH) officers volunteered that, with the Zulus so close, the garrison should move out with all speed. Vane was ordered by Bromhead to ride on to warn the garrison at Helpmekaar; meanwhile, the dreadful news from Isandlwana had been re-confirmed by three more breathless horsemen, all survivors from the battle, including Private Frederick Evans 2/24th on loan to the Mounted Infantry. Having made their report, they too made off at the gallop towards Helpmekaar. Bromhead’s first reaction was to make a fighting withdrawal back to Helpmekaar; he ordered all tents to be struck and the two available wagons to be made ready to convey the hospital patients away from danger.

  It was at this point that Commissary Dalton intervened. He had realized the serious implications of the news and then quietly and respectfully pointed out to Bromhead that trying to outrun the Zulus over a distance of 12 miles with a slow-moving convoy was extremely dangerous; also, there was the long and steep winding track up the ridge to Helpmekaar. Bromhead knew full well that Dalton was an experienced campaigner and heeded his suggestions. Dalton suggested that the only course of action was to fortify the post and defend it until Major Spalding returned with Rainforth’s company – they were due back at Rorke’s Drift within a matter of hours.

  Dalton’s advice and obvious leadership convinced Bromhead to stay and fight; Bromhead gave orders for a 4ft high wall of mealie sacks and boxes to be built around the perimeter of the mission station buildings, to be supervised by Dalton, who set the men to work linking the two buildings. Readily available from the piles of commissariat stores were a large number of 200 pound mealie sacks and hundredweight biscuit and meat boxes. The north side wall overlooking the garden and track to Helpmekaar was made to follow a 5ft high rocky ledge; this gave added height to the barricade as it grew. The decision to stay and fight came during the transfer of the hospital sick and wounded to the wagons; there was a short period of indecision before the process was reversed and all were returned to the hospital.

  The quick and perceptive reaction by Dalton to the possibility of a Zulu attack indicates that he may well have anticipated such an event. He also recognized that Rorke’s Drift garrison was undefended, something that neither Spalding nor Bromhead had realized. The officers had unwittingly failed to comply with Chelmsford’s standing orders to laager every camp. With nearly 100 men of B Company and some 300 natives from Captain Stephenson’s NNC, there was more than sufficient manpower to complete the work quickly. Once work began, Dalton instructed that the external doors of the hospital were to be barricaded and its walls loopholed for the defenders to fire through. There are sufficient contemporary accounts and letters, many written by private soldiers, which acknowledge Dalton’s overall leadership; the soldiers would certainly have been aware that he had served as a sergeant5 in the 85th Regiment (later the King’s Shropshire Light Infantry). Dalton clearly controlled events even at this early stage, and he obviously did so with Bromhead’s approval; not only did Dalton make sense, he was a natural leader with a sound reputation earned during the Ninth Border War.

  It was during this period of high activity and confusion that Adendorff quietly slipped away, his absence going unnoticed by Chard. To be fair to Adendorff, he had already survived the British disaster at Isandlwana and, knowing that Rorke’s Drift was about to be attacked by the same Zulus, his desertion is understandable. Curiously, Chard believed that Adendorff stayed to fight, and wrote in both of his official reports that Adendorff ‘stayed to assist in the defence’. Not so; there is sufficient evidence from contemporary letters that indicate Adendorff not only departed from Isandlwana before the main battle occurred but then also made a timely flight from Rorke’s Drift. When Adendorff initially reported to Chard he stated that he had fled Isandlwana by the ‘Rorke’s Drift road’. This was not possible; the Zulus had completely blocked the road in question before their attack on Isandlwana took place. Vane escaped alone from Isandlwana and only met with Adendorff as he approached the river crossing. The mystery of Chard’s misidentification is solved in Chard’s own report and nominal roll of the Rorke’s Drift survivors – both presented to Queen Victoria. Corporal Francis Attwood of the Army Service Corps was one of five soldiers who received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for bravery at Rorke’s Drift. In his report, Chard describes certain actions of Adendorff but these were well known by those present to have been performed by Attwood. It was a straightforward case of mistaken identity by Chard; Attwood was awarded his DCM at Pietermaritzburg on 15 November 1879. By then Adendorff had disappeared into obscurity although weeks later, news reached the garrison at Rorke’s Drift that both Vane and Adendorff had been arrested at Pietermaritzburg for desertion. The pair were due to face an enquiry
but there is no evidence this ever took place. Chard’s report that Adendorff had ‘stayed to fight’ had already been submitted to higher authority and had the trial taken place, Chard would certainly have been called to give evidence, against his own report – and so the matter of Adendorff’s desertion appears to have been quietly dropped.

  In the midst of these preparations, Witt and his party returned off the hill and blurted out the news of the imminent arrival of the Zulus. When Witt saw his house being prepared for battle and his furniture being used in the barricade, he became, in the words of Surgeon Reynolds, ‘excitable, and in broken English, demanded an explanation’.6 As soon as Witt grasped the desperation of the situation, he muttered something about his family, remounted his horse and sped off towards Helpmekaar. The Revd Smith also thought the time had arrived for him to depart; he frantically sought his horse only to discover that both his horse and native groom had disappeared. With the Zulus now approaching, Smith chose to assist with the defence rather than fleeing on foot.

  As Witt departed in a cloud of dust, Chard arrived to find the site being barricaded, a wall of sacks being erected and the two buildings in the process of being loopholed. There was an urgent discussion between Chard, Bromhead and Dalton, whereupon Chard, now the senior officer, gave his approval to remain and fight. Although command was passed to Chard, he, like Bromhead, let Dalton get on with the work.

  An interesting and most unusual chain of command now developed at Rorke’s Drift. The senior officer present, Captain Stephenson, was a Colonial officer and therefore had no authority over Imperial troops. The senior Imperial officer, Lieutenant Chard, was a Royal Engineer; he lacked fighting experience and even with his marginal seniority, he could not have commanded Bromhead’s company without Bromhead’s explicit approval, which Bromhead readily gave. In any event, both Chard and Bromhead permitted Dalton to give the actual orders; this is odd, as Dalton was both socially and militarily ‘inferior’ being a mere Commissary ‘officer’, a former NCO and, worse, now a Colonial.7

  By 4 p.m. the perimeter wall linking the two main buildings, the storehouse and the hospital was complete. Along the 50 yard front of the buildings was a steep 5ft drop off the ledge overlooking the Helpmekaar road, the orchard and Witt’s walled garden. Along the top of the ledge, another wall of mealie bags was laid to a height of 3ft; this resulted in a barrier some 8ft high along the entire front of the position. The wagons, which Bromhead had brought up to evacuate the wounded now formed part of the impenetrable mealie bag wall facing the Oskarsberg hill. The whole defensive perimeter now stood at a height of at least 4ft, which Dalton considered high enough to afford the defending soldiers adequate protection and still enable them to fight.

  Chard now made a curious decision; he apparently wanted to ensure that the ponts were moored in the middle of the river and out of reach of the Zulus; also, his men had still not arrived back from the ponts. Instead of sending an NCO, he left the mission station and returned to the river where he declined an offer from Sergeant Milne to defend the ponts and hurried his men back to the safety of the mission station. He then met Lieutenant Henderson and his troop of mounted NNH. Henderson and his men had escaped from Isandlwana and readily accepted Chard’s request to cover the ponts and engage any Zulus that approached. This would give those at the mission station sufficient warning of the Zulus’ approach from the direction of the river. Vause was then to report back to Chard and assist however he could. Chard then returned to the mission station. At about 4.20 p.m. the first rank of Zulu skirmishers approached the river and were engaged by Henderson’s NNH. After an initial exchange of shots, the NNH then rode up the hill and, bypassing the mission station, headed off towards Helpmekaar; Lieutenant Henderson shouted his apologies to Chard and then rode off to join his men. This was too much for Stephenson’s NNC who were already agitated by the sound of gunfire; seeing the NNH departing towards apparent safety, they jumped the barricades as one body and ran after the fleeing riders. Sadly, their white NCOs and Captain Stephenson followed suit; whilst the departure of the natives was never likely to be considered a loss to the defenders, the defection of their white officer and NCOs seriously annoyed Bromhead’s men who were now lining the barricade. They fired a spatter of shots at the fleeing deserters and Corporal Anderson fell dead as he was running away towards the road. No order to fire had been given and no questions were subsequently asked.8

  The defection of so many suddenly left the garrison severely depleted and it was obvious that the perimeter was now too long for the remaining 104 able-bodied fighting men. Chard gave orders for the remaining biscuit boxes to be used to build a dividing wall across the position, effectively cutting it in two and isolating the hospital. With only minutes to go before the Zulus arrived, Chard made yet another strange decision: instead of abandoning the now isolated hospital and concentrating his defenders and the sick into the newly created and more easily defended smaller compound, he decided to try and defend the original perimeter. Meanwhile Colour Sergeant Bourne supervised the opening of ammunition boxes and initiated a supply system that ensured every defender had a pile of rounds readily available. He was then directed to take a small party of skirmishers beyond the mission station to deter the approaching Zulus.

  The approaching Prince Dabulamanzi and his remaining force of some 4, 500 Zulus had sent scouts ahead; these were the first Zulus to come face to face with the Rorke’s Drift defenders, albeit from a distance of about half a mile. The Zulu scouts quickly reported back to Dabulamanzi that a small and weakly defended British position lay immediately behind Shiyane. It was an unexpected prize with piles of stores, food and soldiers’ rifles ready for the taking. Dabulamanzi gave orders for the attack to begin and the warriors spread out into their traditional ‘horns’ battle formation.9 The Zulus were unaware that the British were ready for them or that, within the next few hours, the Zulus would need their whole scavenging force just to maintain the attack – thus curtailing their previous intention of plundering the whole area. As the Zulus advanced, they pushed Bourne’s skirmishes back to the mission station; Bourne later wrote: ‘I was instructed ... to take out and command a line of skirmishers ... and about 4.30 the enemy came in sight round the hill to our south and driving in my thin red line of skirmishers, made a rush at our south wall’. The attack on Rorke’s Drift had begun.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Battle of Rorke’s Drift

  From Officer Commanding B/Co. 2/24th Regiment Rorke’s Drift

  22nd January 1879

  To Officer Commanding l/24th Regiment Helpmakaar

  Sir,

  Intelligence has just reached camp that the camp at Isandula Hill is taken by the enemy.

  Lt. G Bromhead, Lieutenant

  Commanding B Company 2/24th Regt.1

  By 4 p.m. Lieutenant Chard was in no doubt that his unexpected command at Rorke’s Drift was about to be attacked by an apparently overwhelming number of Zulu warriors. He could hear the muffled sound of gunshots coming from behind the Oskarsberg, and the firing was coming steadily closer. All around him the work to defend the outpost was nearing completion, and Commissary Dalton was industriously opening ammunition boxes and supervising distribution of rounds to the soldiers manning its defensive wall. In his blue jacket and slouch hat Dalton, a big man and well over 6ft tall, must have stood out among the red-coated soldiers whose average height was less than 5ft 6in. Chard suddenly remembered that there were several casks of medicinal rum in the store building and knowing only too well the British soldiers’ insatiable desire for alcohol, gave orders to Sergeant Windridge that the spirit was not to be touched. Windridge was in temporary charge of the storeroom and he detailed the nearest soldier to guard the rum with orders that, after giving the standard military warning of ‘Stop or I fire’, he was to shoot anyone who attempted to touch the spirit. Having given the order, Windridge continued supervising the defence of the commissariat store, cutting loopholes through the walls and strengthening barricad
es around the building.

  In the other building, originally Witt’s house but now the hospital, lay twenty bed patients. Bromhead directed six soldiers of B Company to take up defensive positions in the hospital; they were Privates Joseph Williams, John Williams (real name Fielding), Robert Jones and William Jones, Henry Hook and Thomas Cole. Those patients who were ‘walking sick’ were issued with rifles; they were Gunner Howard and Privates Adams, Horrigan and Waters. Under the supervision of Dalton, each defender was given a haversack full of ammunition and allocated a room to defend; then all the doors and windows were barred and sealed with sacks and boxes and final improvements were made to the loopholes. Due to the intensive activity, no one questioned the fact that access from each room was only to the outside; there was no access to the other rooms within the hospital, so once barricaded in, the defenders and patients were effectively trapped inside their allotted rooms.

  At the commissariat store, Private Hitch had been detailed to act as lookout from the top of the thatched roof of the building when, at about 4.30 p.m., he urgently shouted a warning that the Zulus were approaching. These first thirty or so Zulus were the iNdluyengwe scouts who had probed ahead of Dabulamanzi’s marauding force. The scouts began to spread out in front of the far end of the mission station beyond the hospital and, as Hitch watched, another 500 or 600 in number arrived and silently joined the scouts in the classic ‘horns’ attack formation. Once in position they began to advance at a run towards the outpost’s south wall between the hospital and storeroom. The defenders immediately opened fire with controlled volleys; the distance was between 300 and 400 yards and a scattering of warriors fell. As the defenders warmed to their task they became more accurate with their fire, which was fortuitous because, as the warriors ran forwards, they darted from whatever cover they could find while wildly firing their own guns, albeit ineffectively. The Zulus were highly skilled at using their shields to distract the soldiers’ aim; they ran with their shields held away from their bodies in the anticipation that the soldiers would fire at the steadily held shields and not the darting bodies holding them. In this way, many Zulus got to within 50 yards of the outpost with their very first charge before the British volleys forced them to take cover behind the numerous boulders that littered the area. The warriors then retreated and regrouped some 40 yards away behind the 5ft high garden wall facing the ledge in front of the mission station. They soon came under a heavy crossfire from the two buildings and those warriors unprotected by the wall sought whatever cover they could find in the orchard and stream beds while those Zulus behind the buildings who bore the brunt of the initial volleys took cover in the area of the cookhouse ovens in front of the Oskarsberg.