The Naval Brigades, Part 3: Armageddon – The Anglo-Zulu War

By Lt Jim Robson RN

Message from the Editor

In this third instalment of his history of the Royal Navy’s Naval Brigades during the 19th century, the author reflects on the legacy of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and demonstrates the lessons learned since the Crimean War. A 20 minute read.

The narrative of the Anglo-Zulu War in Britain was determined by the racial attitudes of 1879, and this has continued to cast a pall over the subject ever since. The source of this portrayal of the war lies in the defeat of the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana, and the immediate reactions of the British press to that defeat. The Guardian, writing of the defeat at the time, placed great emphasis on the numbers of the Zulu Impi faced by the British at Isandlwana, as if sheer weight of numbers provided the only possible explanation for the defeat of British soldiers by an enemy considered to be racially inferior.¹ Similarly, Charles Fripp’s 1885 painting of the battle (Fig. 1) chose to focus viewers’ attention on an outnumbered knot of British soldiers surrounded by a charging Zulu hoard; their fate requiring little imagination. This attitude has persisted into popular portrayals of the war. In Cy Endfield’s famous 1964 film Zulu, the news of the defeat at Isandlwana is met with general incredulity by the defenders of Rourke’s Drift and one character does not even acknowledge the loss of 400 native levies alongside the 800 British soldiers killed.²

The weight of this material has resulted in the Battle of Isandlwana being considered primarily as a British defeat, rather than a Zulu victory. It is only since the turn of the millennium that the events of the war have started to be explored more carefully with regard to the public consciousness, with the result that the narrative of the Anglo-Zulu War has become similar to that of the Crimean War: a conflict dominated by incompetent British Army commanders.³ Lieven has argued that, in the aftermath of the defeat at Isandlwana, this narrative was driven by the Victorian-era press out of a desperate need to create heroes in order to “balance” the scale of the defeat, hence the fanfare concerning the defence of Rourke’s Drift at the time, the story of which was actually released to the public before the news of the Isandlwana disaster itself.⁴

This idea that the British heroes from the war were “created” has been supported by contemporary reviews of the film Zulu, with The New York Times drawing comparisons between that film and the romanticised narratives of Kipling.⁵ What Lieven neglects is that the British press in 1879, and the film industry in 1964, did not need to look into the engagements of the Army from the Anglo- Zulu War to find a group of men to glorify for scoring success in combat. Similarly, if the objective of contemporary reports was to glorify those killed at Isandlwana – to soften the blow of the defeat – then the final sighting of Signalman Second Class William Aynsley of HMS Active, the only British sailor killed in the battle, backed against a wagon wheel while keeping six Zulu warriors at bay with a cutlass, provided an image as enduring as any conjured by poetry.⁶

Rarely is Aynsley mentioned however, just as little to no mention is made of the Naval Brigade that in fact participated in the only successful British offensive of the war. The same is true for the technology which another Naval Brigade brought to the Battle of Gingindlovu, wherein the Zulus suffered greater casualties than the British at Isandlwana.⁷As in the case of the Crimean War [NR 111/1, p. 75 – Ed.], the Naval Brigades demonstrated initiative beyond that of the Army; in one instance the Royal Navy’s sailors were the sole reason that the Army’s logistics did not fail, and throughout the war these formations would once again prove to be more effective operationally than those of the Army.⁸ The difference in the 25 years that had elapsed between the Crimean War and the Anglo-Zulu War was that the Naval Brigades which marched ashore in 1879 were no longer sailors operating in an uncertain enviroment. Rather, they were delivering effect in precisely the environment for which they had been trained.

It has already been discussed how the Crimean War provided the Royal Navy with an opportunity to carve a new niche for itself in the world of the Pax Britannica, and how this was an opportunity seized upon by the Service’s highly motivated Officer Corps. Now it shall be demonstrated how, in the quarter of a century following the end of its involvement in Crimea, the Royal Navy took steps to hone its use of the Naval Brigades such that by the time of the Anglo-Zulu War their use in war had become standard practice and not just improvisation. Comparisons of the performances of the British Army and the Naval Brigade in the field during the campaign will be presented, demonstrating that it was once again the quality of the Royal Navy’s leadership which made the Brigades such an effective force when compared to the less effective efforts of the British Army. The Naval Brigade’s use of technology in this period will also be examined and will be shown to have been a key factor in contributing to the Brigade’s effectiveness in combat – likewise demonstrating the willingness of the Admiralty to adopt new technology ahead of the Army, evidence of a progressive attitude rather than an obstructive one as is commonly argued in popular histories.⁹

Due to the global presence of the Royal Navy, coupled with the fact that virtually any ship on station could form a brigade, when the Naval Brigades were employed ashore they were invariably deployed in small numbers. It was this global presence and ability to respond quickly to situations, therefore, which made their use so favourable to successive British Governments, whose Defence budgets remained modest despite a generally increasing GDP.¹⁰ However, if judged simply in terms of numbers committed, the size of the Naval Brigades that fought in the Anglo-Zulu War, when compared to the thousands of sailors landed during the Crimean War, appear pitiful on paper – throughout the entire war less than 900 men were landed from only four ships.¹¹ The Brigades’ small numbers ashore, nevertheless, belie the very real effect they had on the conflict.

Although a Naval Brigade had been landed to augment the Army’s numbers available for the invasion of the Zulu’s territory, the losses incurred by the Army at Isandlwana presented the Royal Navy with another opportunity to demonstrate the flexibility of its Officer Corps and its exercise of the principles of Mission Command. The request for Naval manpower to augment the losses at Isandlwana was made directly from the Army’s Commander in theatre, Lord Chelmsford, to Commodore F. W. Sullivan, the Commander-in-Chief of the Cape of Good Hope Squadron. In parallel to this request, events outside South Africa would provide a superb example of how Naval Officers of the era did not have to wait to be ordered to act.

The adaptability and initiative of the Royal Navy’s officers of the late 1870s was demonstrated by Captain Richard Bradshaw of HMS Shah. Calling at the island of Saint Helena enroute home from the Pacific, and having heard of the defeat at Isandlwana, Bradshaw collected over 150 soldiers from the island and proceeded – without prior consultation – to South Africa where he landed them along with Shah’s own Naval Brigade; an action much to the relief of the British High Commissioner, Sir Henry Bartle Frere.¹² Specifically, Bartle Frere refered to Bradshaw’s actions as “such as can seldom be rendered by any officer of any arm in Her Majesty’s Service.”¹³ Here, Bartle Frere highlighted not only the global presence of the Royal Navy, and the Service’s ability to project force and intervene in a manner beyond that of the Army, but also reinforced the point made by Spence that Senior Naval Officers (SNOs) were empowered to a decision-making level beyond their Army counterparts.¹⁴ Indeed, SNOs in 1879 were placed in positions of responsibility above those of their Army counterparts and were thus able to make decisions which could impact the strategic outcome of a campaign. As such, they had to be trusted to make the right decisions, and Bradshaw proved more than equal to the task.

Whilst Bradshaw had been acting under his own initiative, Sullivan in turn had ordered the landing of HMS Active’s Brigade under the responsibility of Commander H. J. Fletcher Campbell.¹⁵ Campbell himself was the embodiment of the new professionalism that the Royal Navy had witnessed, particularly with regard to the deployment of Naval Brigades in the years following the Crimean War. Belby writes of sailors going ashore in Crimea equipped with little more than the bare essentials and their initiative to provide whatever they may subsequently have found lacking. An article delivered by Campbell to the Royal United Services Institution (RUSI) demonstrates that by the advent of the Anglo-Zulu War, on the other hand, the conduct of operations ashore was one taken very seriously by the Royal Navy.¹⁶ ¹⁷

In his RUSI article Campbell furthermore demonstrated an awareness of the realities of active service ashore as opposed to the unrealistic expectations of parade ground drills and exercises. It is indeed an article filled with practical advice for campaigning, such as that sailors should be provided with leggings that come up above their calves so that they do not slip down when wet, and even went so far as to comment on seemingly trivial matters such as how the issue ankle-gaiters of the time may look smart when on parade, but that they were a piece of uniform “quite useless on active service.”¹⁸ Having been published only three years after the conclusion of the Anglo-Zulu War, this is a superb example of a Naval Officer with first-hand experience of the Service’s operations ashore imparting the most up-to-date knowledge and lessons learned from those operations in order that the conduct of future operations may benefit. It is a practice common in today’s Royal Navy and Army that post-deployment and exercise reports are filed in a routine manner, but in the context of the 19th century it is further evidence of the Royal Navy’s higher degree of professionalism relative to the Army. As an aside, the notion of ‘talking shop’ in the Officer’s Messes of the Army was one discouraged until the Second World War, when the catastrophic reverses suffered against Germany caused a change of attitude in favour of the RN’s practices which had been demonstrated 50 years previously.¹⁹

Campbell’s article also complements the established Admiralty Instructions of the era, demonstrating further the Service’s high degree of professionalism and how it had seized on the experiences of the Crimean War to forge a new role for itself in the world of the Pax Britannica. Following the events in Crimea, and the Indian Rebellion of 1857, by 1859 the Admiralty issued its Instructions for the Exercise of Small Arms, Field Pieces, etc for the Use of Her Majesty’s Ships 1859, which effectively amounted to a field manual for the conduct of operations ashore by the Naval Brigades.²⁰ It has been shown how in the Crimean War the effectiveness of the Naval Brigades was largely determined by the professionalism and initiative of their officers by adapting existing Admiralty Instructions to the circumstances which they found themselves in; the sailors themselves in 1854, however, could not have been said to be trained soldiers. What can be seen with the publication of these Admiralty Instructions in 1859 is that the Royal Navy intended to ensure that any sailors who stepped ashore to fight would not be enthusiastic amateurs. The Admiralty Instructions of 1859 included detailed instructions on how to execute complex military manoeuvres ranging from the landing of sailors and Royal Marines through to assaulting fortified positions. The authors of the instructions were in no doubt as to their importance, stressing that the success of Naval Brigades ashore depended entirely upon their organisation and their degree of training before being landed.²¹

This emphasis in the Admiralty Instructions on organisation, professionalism, and proper training would pay dividends for the Naval Brigades of HMS Active and Tenedos during the crossing of the Inyezane River. This event was part of Chelmsford’s initial advance into Zulu territory; his force was made up of three columns, with one under Colonel Charles Pearson containing the Naval Brigades ordered to establish an advanced base at Eshowe before advancing on the Zulu capital at Ulundi.²² Coming under fire from armed Zulus as they crossed the river, the Naval Brigade advanced on the Zulu positions and ultimately carried them after a 45 minute firefight that resulted in approximately 300 Zulu casualties – and only seven for the Naval Brigade.²³ Here was direct evidence of the professionalism of the Naval Brigades when performing as standard infantry, and of the practical effect of the Admiralty Instructions when correctly applied by officers like Fletcher Campbell, not least of all achieved against an enemy that had scored outstanding victories against the British Army.

Whilst it cannot be denied that the Army scored its own victories during the Anglo-Zulu War, Rourke’s Drift being the most celebrated, a comparison of its officers against the likes of Fletcher Campbell and Bradshaw casts a poor light on the Army’s performance. The abilities of Lieutenant Chard of the Royal Engineers, who commanded the defence of Rourke’s Drift and was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his efforts, have been called into question as the narrative of the Anglo-Zulu War has been revised.²⁴ Awarded with promotion to acting Major and an assignment to the Flying Column of Sir Evelyn Wood, who had himself served in the Naval Brigade in the Crimean War as a Midshipman, Chard’s conduct was singled out as below standard and lacking drive.²⁵ This cannot be counted as a singular attempt by Wood to put a stain on Chard’s character, as it tallies with the account in Emery’s work of his assessment of Chard. This assessment was confirmed by Chard’s own Company Commander in the Royal Engineers, Captain Walter Parker Jones, who highlighted that Chard’s lackadaisical attitude severely limited his performance as a field officer.²⁶

Nor does Chard’s contemporary at Rourke’s Drift, Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, escape scrutiny. Suffering from hearing problems which progressed into deafness, a quality severely limiting to a Line Infantry Officer like Bromhead who had to be expected to hear and relay orders in battle, his abilities as an officer were held in particularly low regard by his Commanding Officer.²⁷ That Bromhead had been accepted into the Army at all, and been trusted to command infantry despite the system of purchasing Commissions having been abolished in 1871, was largely due to the fact that he came from a notable military family.²⁸ Following the Cardwell Reforms which had seen the purchase of Commissions abolished, entry into the Officer Corps of the British Army’s infantry and cavalry regiments had simply been replaced by nepotism; meaning that although the Army had on paper become more meritocratic and professional, it was not operating at the same standard as the Royal Navy. The favour displayed by certain regiments towards Army Officer candidates with a family connection to them in fact persists to this day, with family connections to regiments in the modern Guards Division certainly being seen as an advantage to those seeking to gain entry. These contemporary assessments of the capabilities of Army Officers, who were lauded for their leadership abilities, lends weight to David’s assertion that flaws in the Army’s leadership were covered up and that the victory at Rourke’s Drift was used to distract the British public from the magnificent victory the Zulu’s gained at Isandlwana.²⁹ Such accusations cannot be levelled at the leadership of the Naval Brigade.

As in the Crimean War the effectiveness of the Naval Brigade in combat, in comparison with the Army, cannot be said to have been derived from any advantage gained by individual weaponry carried by the sailors. The Martini- Henry rifles carried by the Naval Brigades in the Anglo-Zulu War differed in only one respect from the Martini-Henry rifles carried by the Army: the naval pattern rifles had been altered to enable the fitting of a cutlass bayonet as opposed to the socket bayonet on the Army’s weapons.³⁰ This fitting had no effect on the range, accuracy or rate of fire of the weapon and cannot be said to have contributed to the effectiveness of the Naval Brigade during the war. However, the technological advances in heavy weaponry which the Naval Brigade brought ashore, again as in the Crimean War case with the landing of heavy guns, allowed them to achieve a weight of fire in combat in excess of that the Army was capable of.

In 1871, two years ahead of the Army, the Admiralty had adopted the American Gatling Gun as a weapon for use both onboard ships and ashore by Naval Brigades.³¹ With a rate of fire of 800 rounds per minute, despite being hand-cranked, the Gatling was a truly fearsome weapon and one that allowed the Naval Brigades to bring a weight of fire to bear which the Army simply could not match.³² Despite the Army having adopted the weapon, the Gatlings deployed in the Anglo-Zulu War were those of the Naval Brigades and the volume of fire they could produce proved devastating at the Battle of Gingindlovu, where, of an estimated 3,000 Zulus engaged, over 1,000 were killed.³³ In contrast, the heavy weaponry deployed by the British Army at the Battle of Isandlwana, two field guns which should in theory have forced the Zulu Army to take cover and broken up their advance, proved unable to do so.³⁴ This ability to bring to bear a technology with a greater potential to impact the outcome of an engagement, in the form of the Gatling Gun, was a further contribution to the effectiveness of the Naval Brigades during the war.

The performance of the Naval Brigades in the Anglo-Zulu War reinforced the factors which had made them so effective in the Crimean War whilst simultaneously demonstrating that the British Army remained inferior to the Royal Navy in the field of professional leadership. Indeed, the Royal Navy had used the experience of the Crimean War to educate its Officer Corps in the conduct of operations ashore with Naval Brigades; demonstrated by the issue of formal instructions by the Admiralty and the willingness of experienced commanders to impart their knowledge to the wider community.³⁵ This stoodin stark contrast to the Officer Corps of the Army, who, despite no longer being able to buy their commissions, remained reliant on family connections and who were only saved from disgrace in the Anglo-Zulu War by the racial attitudes of the British public and press. The outright refusal to attribute the defeat at Isandlwana to the tactical superiority of the Zulus led to the defence of Rourke’s Drift being turned into a smokescreen to obscure deep professional flaws.

Similarly, the Admiralty’s continued willingness to adopt new technologies, demonstrated by the adoption of the Gatling Gun ahead of the Army, also carried over from the Crimean War and this capability, coupled with the global presence of the Royal Navy, compounded the effectiveness of the Naval Brigades by allowing them to be a highly mobile source of heavy firepower able to be deployed quickly to emergencies around the Empire. Bradshaw’s initiative with HMS Shah was a superb example of this and would be repeated on a grander scale 20 years later, in the action with which the Naval Brigades would become most closely associated.

Footnotes

1
Author unknown, ‘11 February 1879: Entire British Column Lost in Zulu Engagement’, The Guardian, (1879) available online at https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/fromthe-archivelog/2011/may/15/guardian190-battle-of-isandlwana-zulu-war.
2
Zulu, (Diamond Films, 1964).
3
Great Military Blunders, (Darlow Smithson
Productions, 1999).
4
Lieven, Heroism, Albion, (1998).
5
Bosley Crowther, ‘It’s British vs. Natives in Action-Filled ‘Zulu’.’ The New York Times, (8 July 1964), available online at https://www.nytimes.com/search?ropmab=false&query=It%27s%20British%20vs%20natives&sort=best ;Edward Erickson, The Soldier’s Kipling: Poetryand the Profession of Arms, (Pen & Sword Military, 2018).
6
Brooks, Empire, (1999).
7
Frances Colenso, Edward Durnford, History of the Anglo-Zulu War and its Origins, (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
8
Brooks, Empire, (1999).
9
Snow, Seas, (2011).
10
Brooks, Empire, (1999).
11
Captain. H. Fletcher Campbell Royal Navy, ‘A Return of the Naval Forces Landed for Service in Zulu War’, The London Gazette, (7 November 1879) available online at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24780/
page/6311.
12
Sir Henry Bartle Frere, ‘Sir B Frere to the Secretary of State for the Colonies’, The London Gazette, (7 November 1879) available online at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24780/page/6315
13
Ibid, p. 6314.
14
Spence, A history, (2015).
15
Brooks, Empire, (1999).
16
Belby, Naval Brigades, (2006).
17
Captain. H. J. Fletcher Campbell Royal
Navy, ‘Naval Brigades’, Royal United Services Institution Journal, vol. 26, no. 118 (1882) available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03071848209418738?needAccess=true.
18
Ibid, p.872.
19
Holland, War, (2016).
20
Admiralty, Instructions for the Exercise of Small Arms, Field Pieces, etc for the Use of Her Majesty’s Ships 1859, (Kessinger Publishing, 2010).
21
Ibid.
22
Clowes On Sea, (2018).
23
Cdre Francis Sullivan Royal Navy, ‘Forwarding Reports on the Engagements at Inyezane and Isandhlwana’, The London Gazette, (11 March 1879) available online at https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/24693/
page/2047.
24
Lieven, Heroism, Albion, (1998).
25
Field Marshall Sir Evelyn Wood, From Midshipman to Field Marshal, (London, 1906).
26
Frank Emery, The Red Soldier, (London 1977).
27
Adrian Greaves, Rourke’s Drift, (W&N, 2003).
28
Ian Knight, Zulu Rising: The Epic Story of Isandlwana and Rourke’s Drift, (Pan, 2011).
29
Saul David, Zulu: The True Story, (BBC, 2011) available online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/zulu_01.shtml.
30
Cutlass bayonet – Pattern No. 5, 1871 Naval model, conversion, Sealed Pattern (c.1874),
PR.6794, (Royal Armouries, Leeds) available online at https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-277045.html.
31
Gatling 10-barrel, (c.1873), AAA2605, (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich), available online at https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/
objects/rmgc-object-2603.
32
Miller, Guns, (2002).
33
Colenso, Durnford, History, (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
34
Ibid.
35
Admiralty, Instructions, (2010). Fletcher Campbell ‘Naval Brigades’, RUSI, (1882) available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03071848209418738?needAccess=true.

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The Naval Brigades, Part 3: Armageddon – The Anglo-Zulu War

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