Battle of Rorke's Drift (1879): Defence of the Mission Station

The Battle of Rorke’s Drift was fought on 22-23 January 1879, during the Anglo-Zulu War, at a small mission station on the Buffalo River in Natal. Around 150 British and colonial soldiers, many of them sick or wounded, held improvised barricades for some ten to twelve hours against an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors. Coming only hours after the British disaster at Isandlwana, the defence became one of the most celebrated actions in Victorian military history and earned eleven Victoria Crosses.

Background

In January 1879 British forces under Lieutenant-General Lord Chelmsford invaded the Zulu kingdom of King Cetshwayo, beginning the Anglo-Zulu War. The central column crossed the Buffalo (Mzinyathi) River at Rorke’s Drift, a ford named after the trader James Rorke, whose old farm had become a Swedish mission station run by the Reverend Otto Witt.

The army turned the mission into a supply depot and field hospital. The farmhouse served as the hospital and the church as a storehouse. When the column moved forward to Isandlwana, a small garrison stayed behind to guard the crossing, mainly B Company of the 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment of Foot, under Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead. The senior officer present was Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers, who had come to work on the ponts (ferries) across the river.

On 22 January the main Zulu army destroyed the British camp at Isandlwana, killing more than 1,300 men on the British side. The Zulu reserve, which had not been heavily engaged, swept round the battlefield and crossed the river into Natal towards Rorke’s Drift.

Preparing the defence

Survivors of Isandlwana galloped past the mission in the early afternoon with news of the disaster. Chard and Bromhead first considered retreating, but Acting Assistant Commissary James Dalton argued that a column with wagons and sick men would be caught in the open and destroyed. They decided to stand.

In little more than an hour the garrison built a perimeter linking the hospital and storehouse, using heavy bags of mealies (maize) and wooden biscuit boxes, together with the stone walls of a cattle kraal. Patients able to hold a rifle were armed. A company of the Natal Native Contingent and a party of mounted men who had arrived at the post fled shortly before the attack, which left Chard with about 150 men to hold a perimeter built for many more. He ordered an inner wall of biscuit boxes to be built across the yard so that the defenders could fall back to a smaller line.

The battle

The Zulu force came from the uThulwana, iNdlondlo, uDloko and iNdluyengwe regiments, many of them older married men. They were commanded by Prince Dabulamanzi kaMpande, a half-brother of Cetshwayo. The king had told his armies not to cross into Natal, so the attack went beyond his orders.

The first assault came at about 4.30 pm against the south wall and the hospital end. Over the following hours the Zulu made repeated rushes, while riflemen on the Oskarsberg terrace above the station kept up fire on the British position. Fighting was often hand to hand across the mealie bags, with bayonets against stabbing spears.

As darkness fell the defenders withdrew behind the biscuit-box wall. The hospital, cut off at one end of the line, was set alight. Inside, Privates Henry Hook, John Williams, Robert Jones and William Jones held doorways while others hacked holes through internal walls to drag patients from room to room, then out through a window and across the yard. Several patients could not be saved.

Commissary staff turned mealie bags into a high redoubt, and the burning hospital lit up the ground so that attackers could be seen. Attacks continued until after midnight and firing went on until about 4 am. At dawn on 23 January the Zulu withdrew as Chelmsford’s column approached from Isandlwana.

Key people

• John Chard (1847-1897), Royal Engineers, the senior officer, who organised the perimeter.
• Gonville Bromhead (1845-1891), commander of B Company, 2nd/24th.
• James Dalton (1832-1887), commissariat officer who urged the garrison to fight and helped plan the barricades.
• James Reynolds, the army surgeon who treated the wounded under fire.
• Dabulamanzi kaMpande (c. 1839-1886), Zulu prince and commander of the attacking force.

Consequences

The garrison lost 17 men killed or mortally wounded and about 15 wounded. British burial parties counted 351 Zulu bodies around the station. Several accounts by soldiers record that wounded Zulu found after the battle were killed, so total Zulu deaths were probably higher than the body count, with some historians suggesting around 500 or more.

Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded: to Chard, Bromhead, Dalton, Reynolds, Corporal William Allen, Corporal Christian Ferdinand Schiess of the Natal Native Contingent, and Privates Frederick Hitch, Henry Hook, Robert Jones, William Jones and John Williams. Several Distinguished Conduct Medals were also given.

Historians have long noted the political value of the victory. It reached Britain alongside news of Isandlwana and helped to soften a humiliating defeat. Some senior officers, including Sir Garnet Wolseley, privately questioned the scale of the awards. The war continued until British forces defeated the Zulu at Ulundi on 4 July 1879.

Legacy

The battle quickly entered British popular culture through newspaper reports, paintings by Alphonse de Neuville and Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), and later books and films. The 1964 film Zulu, starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine, made Rorke’s Drift internationally famous, though it simplified events and characters.

Zulu tradition remembers the attack differently. For the regiments involved it was a costly and unauthorised raid that ended in failure, on a day when the main army had won a great victory at Isandlwana. Dabulamanzi was later criticised for leading his men across the border against Cetshwayo’s instructions.

Today the rebuilt mission buildings at Rorke’s Drift house a museum, and the site forms part of the battlefields route of KwaZulu-Natal, visited together with Isandlwana across the river valley. Memorials stand to both the British and the Zulu dead.

Myths and facts

“The defenders were a Welsh regiment.” The 24th had its depot at Brecon, but in 1879 its title was the 2nd Warwickshire Regiment; it became the South Wales Borderers only in 1881. English soldiers were the largest group in B Company, alongside a significant number of Welshmen and Irishmen.

“They sang Men of Harlech.” This famous scene comes from the 1964 film Zulu. No contemporary account mentions it.

“Rorke’s Drift won the most VCs ever in one day.” It is one of the highest totals for a single action, but more Victoria Crosses were awarded for the fighting at Lucknow on 16 November 1857 during the Indian Rebellion.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1879, 11 January: Chelmsford’s central column crosses into Zululand at Rorke’s Drift.
• 1879, 22 January (morning): The Zulu army overwhelms the British camp at Isandlwana.
• 1879, 22 January (about 3.15 pm): Survivors bring news to Rorke’s Drift; the garrison begins building barricades.
• 1879, 22 January (about 4.30 pm): The first Zulu attack strikes the south wall and the hospital.
• 1879, 22 January (evening): The hospital burns and patients are evacuated through the walls.
• 1879, 23 January (dawn): The Zulu force withdraws as Chelmsford’s column approaches.
• 1879, 2 May: The first of the Victoria Crosses for the action are announced in the London Gazette.

Why it matters

Rorke’s Drift showed how a small, determined force behind improvised defences could survive against far larger numbers. Its fame, magnified in Britain after Isandlwana and later by the film Zulu, has shaped popular memory of the Anglo-Zulu War, sometimes overshadowing the Zulu kingdom’s own experience of invasion and defeat.