Lieutenant John Chard, the second Royal Engineer hero of January 22, 1879, the officer-in-command at Rorke’s Drift by a whisker of seniority over Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead of the 24th, was having a quiet day. His report to Queen Victoria (in the Chard link above) from which I include a number of quotes is essential reading! His superior officer had left him in charge while he went down to the main camp at Helpmakaar with the assurance that “of course, nothing will happen, and I shall be back again this evening early”.
During the morning, whilst attending to the ferry at the river crossing, his responsibility, Chard had become aware of Zulu activity. But, “I then went down to my tent by the river, had some lunch comfortably, and was writing a letter home when my attention was called to two horsemen galloping towards us from the direction of Isandhlwana. From their gesticulation and their shouts, when they were near enough to be heard, we saw that something was the matter and on taking them over the river, one of them, Lieutenant Adendorff of Lonsdale's Regiment, Natal Native Contingent, asking if I was an officer, jumped off his horse, took me on one side, and told me that the camp was in the hands of the Zulus and the army destroyed; that scarcely a man had got away to tell the tale, and that probably Lord Chelmsford and the rest of the column had shared the same fate”. Chard galloped back to the Rorke’s Drift camp to learn “that the enemy were advancing in force against our post”. Preparations to defend it were already well in hand. Chard presciently “saw that our line of defence was too extended, and at once commenced a retrenchment of biscuit boxes, so as to get a place we could fall back upon if we could not hold the whole”. This was indeed the situation scarcely two hours later.
The Zulu reserve, having missed out on the great victory, did not want to go home without “washing their spears”, and had crossed into Natal. King Cetshwayo had given express orders that the Zulus should only fight within their borders, defending against invasion rather than making war on the British Empire (a nicety which the Great Game players of the Cape High Comisssion would have paid no attention to). But the prospect of battle honours and easy spoils from the small supply base at the Mission and other softer targets was irresistible to his half brother, Dabulamanzi, the commander of the four reserve regiments, about 4,000 men in total. Three regiments forded the Buffalo River a couple of miles downstream as the crow flies from Rorke’s Drift.The fourth, the iNdluyengwe, after following the right horn round Isandlwana, had joined the one-sided running battle with the survivors that ended at the crossing at Fugitive’s Drift. This regiment jumped over the river into Natal at a point where it narrows into a deep channel through the rock.
Zulu Crossing Point
Fugitive's Drift from the Natal Side
There would have been far fewer trees and shrubs in 1879 but the terrain over which the remnants of the imperial force were funnelled from Isandlwana down to Fugitives’ Drift, is otherwise unchanged. The first Zulus to arrive at Rorke’s Drift Mission came round Shiyane hill to the south of the British position at 4.30pm. They found the storehouse and the Mission house, now requisitioned as a hospital, linked by barricades of mealie (maize) bags to create a perimeter of less than 300 yards. This was to be reduced to less than 100 yards, well before the Zulu attack finally wore out. Chard drew a meticulous plan of his defences a few months later.
Mission Station from South East
The storehouse was incorporated into Fort Bromhead, which was built on the site not long after the battle, and was then replaced by a Lutheran church, rather larger than the original building but built mostly over its foundations. The distance to the west end of the hospital is about 40 yards. The trees are fairly recent, but contemporary images show one or two similar ones in different places.There was some cover for the attackers outside the perimeter on this side in a small cookhouse, and a ditch and low bank even closer to the hospital and the linking mealie bags. The Zulus swept round the west end of Shiyane and launched their first attack against this side of the position. Chard writes, “We opened fire on them, between five and six hundred yards, at first a little wild, but only for a short time, a chief on horseback was dropped by Private Dunbar, 24th. The men were quite steady, and the Zulus began to fall very thick. However, it did not seem to stop them at all, although they took advantage of the cover and ran stooping with their faces near the ground. It seemed as if nothing would stop them, and they rushed on in spite of their heavy loss to within 50 yards of the wall, when they were taken in flank by the fire from the end wall of the store building, and met with such a heavy direct fire from the mealie wall, and the hospital at the same time, that they were checked as if by magic”.
Hospital from the north
The roof was thatch at the time of the battle but the reconstructed building is much as it looked then. The tactically significant rocky ledge that ran along the front of the position, except where the track led into the Mission yard, is now mostly earthed and grassed over but one of the two sections still partially exposed can be seen to the right (the building behind is more recent). The short barricade at the north-west corner of the hospital that faced the flat ground above the ledge was the weakest point in the original perimeter. Only modest firepower could be brought to bear on its approaches by the few “rats in a hole” in the end rooms of the hospital, and the height of the mealie bags was not augmented by the ledge. Shiyane is behind, lit by the setting sun. Zulu marksmen took up position on the ledges here and in caves behind and kept up a heavy fire. This caused some casualties but was fairly ineffective because the range of 300+ yards was too great for their antiquated and poorly maintained weapons. If they had been able to bring captured Martini-Henrys down from Isandlwana (and been able to handle them as well as their opponents), they could have done much more serious damage. It seems the Zulus suffered far more casualties from British counterfire than they inflicted, and the threat was more or less neutralised by Chard’s decision to fall back from the hospital and abandon the untenable western half of the position. After this most of the defenders were shielded by the storehouse.
To be continued....