CLASSIC GUNS
Soldier of the Queen
Britain's legendary single-shot rifle achieved its greatest fame during the hard-fought Zulu Wars of the late 1870s.
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Some 1,450 men of Lord Chelmsford's command lay dead on the South African plain at Isandhlwana. A force of 20,000 Zulu warriors under their king Cetshwayo had all but destroyed the British force comprising six companies of the 24th Regiment of Foot (2nd Warwickshire), wagon drivers, volunteers, staff and camp followers. Another force of 4,000 Zulus was on its way to the small mission station-turned-hospital at Rorke's Drift. Awaiting the onslaught were 84 men of B Company, 2nd Battalion,
24th Regiment of Foot; soldiers of the Natal Native Contingent; 36 hospital patients; and men of the Army Hospital Corps.
On January 22, 1879, while working on the bank of the Drift, Lieutenant John Chard, Royal Engineers, officer commanding at Rorke's drift, received news of the slaughter at Isandhlwana. He rushed back to the mission to discover Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead, Commander of the men of the 2/24th, had also heard the intelligence and was preparing to move the invalids to safety in heavy ox-carts. Chard realized that the slow-moving vehicles would never get the men clear of the Zulus, and he ordered that perimeters of biscuit boxes and mealie (maize) bags be set up to act as defensive barricades. Men of the Natal Kaffirs, retreating from Isandhlwana, arrived during these preparations and were pressed into service. Several members of the 2/24th were sent into the hospital to guard the patients, and the rest of the forces were positioned to await the Zulu onslaught.
The defense of the mission station at Rorke's drift has become one of history's most famous "last stand"-type of engagements. But the battle's notoriety with the public at large was rather late in coming. With the exception of die-hard military history buffs, it was largely unknown until the release, in 1964, of Cy Endfield's epic cinematic depiction of the event, Zulu. Starring Stanly Baker, Jack Hawkins and a then-unknown Michael Caine, the movie, while wildly inaccurate in places, was still a stirring retelling of the event and for the most part kept pretty much to the spirit of the engagement. Some 15 years later a prequel, Zulu Dawn, featuring Peter O' Toole, Burt Lancaster and John Mills, about Isandhlwana, also by Endfield, came out, and while more accurate and authentic than its predecessor, it had little of Zulu's �lan.
As well as illuminating the actual Battle of Rorke's Drift, Zulu made a rather obscure military rifle famous--the Martini-Henry. Over the years, prices on these rifles rose steadily and quantities diminished, until recently when International Military Antiques, in association with Atlanta Cutlery, brought a large number of them (along with accessories) out of Nepal--a boon for shooters and collectors.
