History of South Africa podcast · Desmond Latham

Episode 256 - The Lightning of Heaven Release Spirits as Rorke’s Drift Comes into Play

·25 min·1 clip

Melville and Coghill are said to have carried the Queen’s Colour toward Fugitive’s Drift.

The episode opens in the aftermath of Usandlawan, where the British have just suffered their greatest defeat in their colonial history and the bodies of 1,400 officers and men lie scattered across the battlefield. Lord Chelmsford has only just returned from the east, where he had gone in support of Major Dartnell, and he reaches the slopes of Usandlawan at dusk on 22 January 1879. As the uneasy British soldiers move west toward the Mzinyati River and Rorke’s Drift, they can see dense masses of Zulus retiring with herds of cattle and wagons on the skyline to their right. About 800 meters from the battlefield, they stop and form a line. Guns are placed in the center, with three companies of British infantry, a Natal native contingent battalion, and cavalry on the flanks, while the mounted police remain in reserve. Chelmsford orders artillery fire onto the neck of Usandlawan, and Major Wilson Black moves up the right to seize Black’s Kopi, which overlooks the battlefield. Around 7 p.m., Black signals the main force to advance. From there, the narrative turns to the confusion and mythmaking that followed the disaster. The episode questions the version of events about officers carrying the colours, and cites Saul David to note that Melville and Coghill were the only officers of the 1st and 24th Regiments to survive. It suggests the colours story was later polished into something cleaner than the reality, and shows Lieut. Walter Higginson inserting himself into the tale. Trooper Walwyn Walker of the Natal Carbineers offers another eyewitness account: he crossed the river under covering fire from a section of Zikali’s horse, the black mounted soldiers who rode alongside the colonials and the British on the Natal side of the Imzinyati River. Higginson staggers out of the river nearby, is told to ride Barker’s horse to the top of the bank and wait, and instead rides off, leaving Barker stranded and pursued. Barker is later found more than four kilometres away, exhausted after trying to escape the Zulu warriors. When Barker confronts Higginson, Higginson breaks down and claims he could not have gone any further. The episode says Higginson was later seen at Haltmacar inside Transvaal territory with a black eye, apparently from Barker. The episode then widens back out to Rorke’s Drift. Goods and other supplies are being piled up as makeshift sandbags on the veranda, ready to be used just in time from the British point of view. The station is being turned into a defensive position in anticipation of a much larger crisis. The story ends on that edge, with the defence of Rorke’s Drift still ahead. The episode makes clear that this will be a desperate, improvised stand by a handful of British soldiers, reeling from the disaster at Usandlawan, holding a mission station against overwhelming odds and salvaging imperial honour in a single night. It also signals that the coming battle will generate its own layer of myth. The real action, and the real argument over what happened, is still to come.

As heard by us

A sharp move from the earlier defeat into the stories built around Rourke's Drift.

The episode begins in the fallout from the earlier defeat and follows the British push toward Rourke's Drift, where the map of the ground matters as much as the men on it. The infantry line, the cavalry on the flanks, and the mounted police in reserve give the story its shape.

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Why you'd press play

You want the road west after Usandlawan mapped without the mythmaking.

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