On the morning of January 22, 1879, Lieutenant John Chard of the Royal Engineers stood at the mission station of Rorke’s Drift and watched through his telescope as Zulu forces moved in force beyond the hill. To Chard, it looked as though they might be driving toward the ponts, the floating bridges he was building at the river crossing. He rode back quickly to report to his superior officer. If you have seen the film Zulu, you might assume Chard was the senior officer present.
He was senior during the battle itself, true. But on the morning of January 22, the highest-ranking officer at Rorke’s Drift was not Chard. It was Major Henry Spalding. And when the Zulus arrived, Spalding was nearly ten miles away, looking for reinforcements, having left Chard in temporary command of the mission station that was about to become one of the most famous defensive actions in military history.
This is the story of Major Henry Spalding, the commander who was not there. After Chard spotted the Zulus on the heights above Isandlwana, he rode back toward Rorke’s Drift, watching for any advance. He saw none. What he did not realize was that the Zulus moving behind the hill were not heading for Rorke’s Drift at all.
They were wheeling to attack the camp at Isandlwana. By the end of the afternoon, more than 1,500 British and colonial troops had been annihilated. Shortly after midday, Chard returned to the drift, crossed the river into British territory, and found the senior officer at the mission station, Major Henry Spalding. If you are wondering where Spalding appears in the film Zulu, the answer is that he does not appear at all.
And here is why. Spalding was the central column, Lord Chelmsford’s column, the deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster general. In other words, he was responsible for supplying the column as it advanced into Zululand. That was why he was at Rorke’s Drift, where the mission station was being used as a supply depot and hospital.
Food, equipment, and ammunition were being stored there in preparation for the advance. It was also the reason Chard was there. He had been ordered to oversee the construction of floating bridges over the river into Zululand. The bridges were to be built by a company of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Regiment of Foot, which had not yet advanced, despite orders, from their base at Helpmekaar, about ten miles down the road in the British colony of Natal.
Spalding shared Chard’s concern that the Zulus might attack the crossing and cut off the supply line to the column. The mission station was guarded by another company of the 24th, B Company of the 2nd Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead. Spalding had already taken a sergeant and six men from that small company to guard the crossing, but he agreed with Chard that this tiny force could not repel a determined attack. So Major Henry Spalding decided to ride his bicycle the ten miles to Helpmekaar to urge the relief column forward.
It was two o’clock in the afternoon. Before he left, Spalding asked Chard which of the two of them, Chard the engineer or Lieutenant Bromhead, held senior rank. Chard had no idea. Spalding consulted the army list and declared that Chard was senior and would therefore be in command, adding, though he would do nothing of course, and would return that evening, early.
Some argue that this was either a dereliction of duty or an act of cowardice. Why, for example, did Spalding not send Chard instead? Chard could not build the floating bridges without the company ten miles away. On the other hand, Spalding was responsible for supplies.
The bridges were part of that supply line, and the missing company was disrupting operations, especially if Lord Chelmsford was about to fight a battle against the Zulus. He needed as many of his supplies as possible at the front. And since the company they were waiting for was commanded by a captain, perhaps Spalding felt his rank as major was needed to get them moving. It was not as though the men remaining at Rorke’s Drift watched him leave in absolute terror.
Apart from Chard, who had seen the Zulu maneuvers north at Isandlwana, no one had seen any Zulus on his way back to camp. Despite the sound of artillery in the distance, no one seemed particularly concerned. If anything, the men may have been thinking they would miss the fighting. As if to reinforce the calm at the mission station, Lieutenant Bromhead sat down to a quiet lunch with Acting Assistant Commissary James Dalton, while Chard returned to his tent by the river to write letters.
But as Spalding approached Helpmekaar, the situation changed completely. It was about half past three in the afternoon, and Spalding was still short of his destination, when he was delighted to meet not one but two companies of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Regiment, finally on the move. His joy did not last long. These two companies were responding to shocking news that had reached Helpmekaar.
Riders had arrived to tell them the British camp at Isandlwana had fallen. They were marching to reinforce Rorke’s Drift. Spalding joined them on the return toward the station. At almost the same moment, at the pontoons, Lieutenant Chard had finished writing his letter and saw two men on horseback on the Zululand side of the river.
They also told him, from Isandlwana, that the camp had fallen. By the time Chard reached the mission station, Lieutenant Bromhead and Dalton had already begun building barricades. Meanwhile, Spalding was riding ahead of the two companies marching to support Rorke’s Drift. Accompanied by a man named Dickson from the local Buffalo Border Guard, he encountered a group of fugitives.
At first they were African civilians, and they all told him two things: that Isandlwana had fallen and that Rorke’s Drift had fallen as well. While the accounts of the civilians were worrying, what truly caused alarm was the appearance of mounted troops among the fugitives, telling him exactly the same thing. In one account, Spalding claimed he ordered some of the fleeing soldiers to turn around and follow the two companies of the 24th back toward the enemy. He also claimed in a later report that all of these men obeyed except two.
As darkness fell, Spalding and Dickson saw flames in the sky above Rorke’s Drift. It was the hospital burning, but Spalding saw in it confirmation of the fugitives’ stories that the mission station had already fallen. Then, in the last light of day, he met the Zulus. They were spread along the road leading to the mission station, about two miles from Rorke’s Drift.
Beyond them, Spalding saw a donga, a dry riverbed, which he thought might contain more enemy lying in wait. Then the Zulus began to spread out, forming their famous offensive horns of the buffalo formation. The two men were still about a mile ahead of the infantry companies. As the Zulus moved to surround them, Spalding and Dickson wheeled their horses and urged them back down the road.
When they reached the two companies, they climbed to high ground to assess the situation. The Zulus seemed to have disappeared. But on the horizon, flames were rising over Rorke’s Drift. Consider the situation.
News of the British defeat at Isandlwana was spreading, Rorke’s Drift was reported fallen, the Zulus had been seen face to face, and night was coming. What would you have done? Spalding decided the best course was to fall back to Helpmekaar and at least try to save the stores there. The exhausted and tense column marched back to the supply depot and arrived around nine in the evening, where they helped build defensive fortifications under the command of a colonel of the Royal Engineers.
Meanwhile, at Rorke’s Drift, the 139 defenders were fighting for their lives against 4,000 Zulus. Later, some survivors claimed they had actually seen British soldiers from a possible relief column in the distance, but who suddenly disappeared. If so, it must have been a cruel psychological blow to the defenders. Interestingly, Chard did not mention them in his later report.
On the morning of January 23, Spalding and the garrison at Helpmekaar found themselves surrounded by thick fog. The men strained their eyes and ears for any sight or sound of the enemy, who must surely be somewhere. Suddenly, the sound of galloping hooves came from the front, and a European rider broke through the gloom. He carried a message from Lieutenant Chard, stating that the mission station was still holding.
Major Spalding mounted his horse immediately and set off with a small escort of horsemen toward Rorke’s Drift. On the way, they met another rider. This one, named Flynn, was from Lord Chelmsford’s column. He brought news that only half of Chelmsford’s force had been wiped out at Isandlwana.
Chelmsford, with the rest of his soldiers, was retreating back into Natal, having just relieved the garrison at Rorke’s Drift. Spalding now rode into Rorke’s Drift, a place far different from the mission station he had left the previous day, and presented his report to Lord Chelmsford. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift is considered one of the great David and Goliath battles of history. 139 British soldiers held their ground against 4,000 Zulus for roughly twelve hours through the night.
It was immortalized in the film Zulu, and eleven defenders received the Victoria Cross. If Spalding had stayed, he might have been among those honored. But he did not stay. And he was not.
It was an awkward end to a long military career. Henry Spalding was born on September 27, 1840, the second son of Eliza and Thomas Spalding. Thomas managed the family firm, Spalding and Hodge, one of the largest suppliers of paper and stationery in London at the time. Henry joined the army as a second lieutenant in early 1858 at the age of seventeen, and soon saw fighting during the Indian Rebellion.
He was present with the army that crossed the River Gumti during the final advance to capture Lucknow and was part of the garrison of the captured town of Sultanpur. He eventually moved to the 104th Regiment, formed in 1858 when the European regiments of the East India Company were transferred to the regular British army. The regiment later became the Royal Munster Fusiliers, disbanded upon the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922. Spalding remained with the 104th for the rest of his military career.
He was promoted to captain in December 1869, seen as a promising officer. At some point in the 1870s, he was attached to the British embassy in St. Petersburg, where he learned Russian to a very high standard. In 1874, he published a book titled Khiva and Turkestan and became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
The book, written by a British officer fluent in Russian within a year of Russia’s control over those old khanates, suggests Spalding was deeply involved in the Great Game between the two empires in Central Asia. In January 1879, he returned to the field, joining Lord Chelmsford’s central column as a brevet major during the invasion of Zululand. As deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster, he was responsible for the column’s supply chain, keeping lines of communication open, and ensuring supplies reached the main force in enemy territory. As a member of Chelmsford’s staff, although he was the senior officer present at Rorke’s Drift on January 22, he was not formally the commander of the mission station.
Why he left the depot at that time, and why he did not advance with the two companies of the 24th when they saw smoke rising from Rorke’s Drift, remains debated to this day. Spalding did submit an official report explaining his actions on January 22. Although some may regard it as self-justification, senior officers were expected to write reports on their actions. His name appeared in official dispatches later in the war, and he served as a commander at the funeral of the Imperial Prince.
His absence from the Battle of Rorke’s Drift did not appear to be a serious stain on his career. But it was certainly a massive missed opportunity. If he had remained, he would, like Chard, likely have received the Victoria Cross as the senior officer in the battle. He retired at the end of the following year after 22 years of service, at the age of forty, with the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel.
He then revived his interest in Russian. In 1881, he published the first English translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin. It is said that Ivan Turgenev, the greatest living Russian writer of the time, described it as remarkably faithful, and it remained the only complete English translation for the next fifty years. Henry Spalding died in 1907 in London from a tumor.
He was sixty-six years old. His body was cremated, and his ashes were buried in his wife’s grave at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Rorke’s Drift, where he was not present, was his moment with destiny, and he missed it.