Zulu, the 1964 movie

Factual Questions
1

Just caught this on TV the other night. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s based on a battle that took place in 1879 between the British army and the Zulu army at a place called Rourke’s Drift. About 4,000 Zulu warriors descend on the mission at Rourke’s Drift, which was defended by about 140 British troops (about a third of which are in the hospital with various afflictions). Over the course of two days, the British manage to fend off the attack and the Zulu warriors depart after offering up a chant to the British honoring them as fellow warriors.

This is a great movie, and for the most part historically accurate. I’ve heard people gripe that certain parts of the British uniforms were incorrect and such, but this battle really did happen much as portrayed in the movie.

My question is, how in the world did this come to pass? The Zulus had them outnumbered by approximately 40 to 1, and although primarily armed with spears did have some rifles. The British were all armed with rifles and were fighting a defensive action, but their main fortifications were constructed from sacks of grain. On the face of it this sounds like no contest - assign 1,000 Zulus to each side of the fortifications, and just rush them.

So was the Zulu strategy in this case just that bad? It seems that if they had used their rifles more effectively (they used them only as long-distance snipers, and in the movie at least they were pretty poor shots), and attacked on more than a single narrow front that allowed the British to concentrate their firepower, this would have been a cakewalk. Am I missing something or is that it?

2

Well, here’s a map (at the bottom of the screen)

http://www.rapidttp.com/milhist/vol044gc.html

The mission at Rorke’s Drift was almost taken by the Zulu, and if Chelmsford hadn’t come up when he did, it would have fallen. The British did have an advantage in weaponry, though, and the Zulu were charging a fortified position manned with repeating rifles while they were armed only with spears.

The Zulu used their riflemen as snipers because the Zulu hadn’t trained with rifles, and Zulu military doctrine didn’t include the rifle. It was based around assegai.

3

I just want to say…

When I was in the Royal Navy I was drafted to work in the Royal Navy Display Team for a year.

We did a window ladder display(gymnastics on a huge wooden frame 40’ off the ground), cutlass drill- a bit like swinging Indian clubs but somewhat sharper, some Irish Jigging in Berlin, firing cannons on HMS Victory (yes, really)and at Cardiff Castle we did the ceremonial mast climbing.

It was at the Cardiff military tattoo that we appeared with the Welsh Guards who were doing a re-enactment of their action at Rourkes Drift.

They even had the original type of weapon to hand, the Martini Henry which had a rather large bore, at least half an inch. These weapons had come to light when a local theatre company had gone belly-up.

So, there we were, doing our own re-enactment of the Battle of Trafalger and the mast climbing thing and watching this mock Zulu battle, and it looked fun, we all wanted to join in.

Half the Welsh guards played the part of the defenders(no surprise there then) and the other half were the Zulus.
Now this has a few problems, you don’t get that much sun in Wales so the natives have a somewhat fairer skin, plus there is a distinct shortage of Ostriches and thus a consequent shortage of their feathers but there are rumours of large cats around the Welsh mountains so maybe thats where they got the leopardskins from.

The ‘Zulus’ had to wear thick black tights, black body stockings, faceblack and unlikely fuzzy wigs, the skirts looked like they’d been hijacked from some unfortunate, unkempt, Hawaians and the shields resembled 70’s wallpaper.

Well, you wouldn’t recognise your own mum under that lot would you ? So on the last night we decided to have some fun.

For our part, Nelson at Trafalger was taken out by a Starsky and Hutch lookalike armed with a rubber sucker automatic pistol “FREEZE YOU MUTHA!!”

So on came the main event, and sure enough there were some strangers among the Zulus.

I was acting as the lookout on the roof of one of the mobile scenerey houses, in full Navy dress uniform with the soplight on me, and when I fired all the fuzzie wuzzies fell down at once, all 300 of them, the was an awful silence for a moment before the crowd roared with laughter.

The Zulus picked themselves up and charged toward the barricades and as they retreated the grabbed the regimental mascot, a young lad about ten years old in regimental dress.
He was carried off much to the consternation of the commentator, and then sent back minus his trousers(pants if you’re American).
Poor lad, running back to the safety of the Welsh gaurds away from the Zulus in front of an audience of 5000 or so, but these soldier boys do have their little perversions.

When it was all over they did the famous Zulu chant as seen in the film, except that the tune and words were quite differant.

I’m sure that my CO recognised me but he never let on, even if he was recalled back to Portsmouth to do a little explaining.

4

I don’t know much about this, except that I have seen the movie too.

From what I read about Zulu warriors, they were known for singing and marching to war that can be heard miles away. Actually, can be felt as the ground trembles as they march towards you. This scare tactic had gave them great success.

As far as attacking the British, you have to know that British had professional soldiers and Zulu did not. Not to say anything bad about Zulu, but especially the rifle warriors are going to be a lot inferior.

Also, from what I can get, the Zulu had inferior arms too.

As for assaulting from all angles, from what limited sources I read, the Zulu warriors were not kamikaze fighters. They will retreat if they take too many losses. While the British soldiers would rather die than taken prisoner, so they had a lot more to fight for.

5

The Zulus had just defeated a much larger British force at Isandhlwana, so they could certainly hold their own against the British.

One factor in the battle was that the Zulus had been forbidden by their king to cross into British territory. Rourke’s Drift was on the British side of the border and the Zulus, flush with victory at Islandhlwana, had gone there in hot persuit. When the British gave them resistance, they remembered that they had been ordered not to go there and withdrew.

BTW, the movie was probably the first time since the implementation of the Hayes office that a mainstream film showed topless women.

6

“Zulu” had a much less successful sequel/prequel called “Zulu Dawn” about the events leading up the the battle depicted in “Zulu”. In particular, there was a bigger battle where the Zulu’s won! It is considered (according to the movie credits and elsewhere) as the most successful battle fought by a primitive army against a “modern” army with guns and artillery.

In other words, the Zulus could and did defeat British armies.

I suspect the Zulus called off the attack on Rorke’s Drift due to the obvious Pyrhic victory it would have entailed.

Strange how the movie about the big battle won by the Zulus was not as successful as the little battle won by the Brits.

(And RealityChuck gets in while I’m previewing!)

7

IIRC and IMBW but

I believe that the Zulu contingent that attacked Rorke’s Drift was acting contrary to orders from the Zulu nation.

The group of the Zulu militia at Rorke’s Drift had just missed the greatest Zulu military victory of all time - being held in reserve. The British supply depot at Rorke’s Drift would be to them a small consolation. Btw,the Zulus were armed but not with captured modern British rifles.

The Zulu victory at Isandhlwana, January 22, was based on the invasion of Zulu land by British troops under South African governour-general Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere. The British government in London did not know - or claimed not to know - of this invasion.

Rorke’s Drift was outside the Zulu land and that is why - despite overwhelming superiority - they withdrew on January 23rd.

The British view is that they withdrew at the approach of additional British troops.

Such niceties were not lost on the British who stunned by their defeat at Isandhlwana, and organized in part by a young Cecil Rhodes, quickly drove the Zulus to surrender. Rhodes would form DeBeers in 1880 and soon turned his sights on the Dutch Boer republics.

The British also handed out Victoria Crosses at Rorke’s Drift by the handful - reflecting their outrage at being slaughtered by savages armed mostly with spears.

The Brits also executed all of the Zulu warriors that lay wounded at Rorke’s Drift.

The site http://www.rorkesdriftvc.com will tell you all you need to know about this battle.

Zulu is a great film nonetheless, treats the Zulu like human beings, and was Michael Caine’s first major role.

dos centavos

8

Casdave, I’ve heard that reanactment story on the web before!

This was Michael Caine’s first starring role, and it is a great movie. The way I see the story (and I have only seen the movie, not read any histories of this event), the rather junior officers in charge made no tactical mistakes, defended correctly and had great seargents. Repeating rifles or no, these soldiers fought an amazing defensive action.

But (hijack) the most amazing defensive action ever was a losing battle that won a war. 490 b.c. at the pass at Thermyplae, 327 Spartan warriors held off 80,000 Persians for 3 whole days. (Spartans, incidentally put the lie to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, as when they were away from their women folk (usually) they frequently took comfort in the arms of their comrades.) Because the Persian land force arrived too late to help with the naval battle. It’s been a while since I’ve read Herodotus, so if casdave or another can correct the errors, I’d be appreciative. (All Spartans, and their King Leonides, were killed by the Persians.)

9

Well unless they were in Cardiff Castle in summer of 1979 then they weren’t there.

10

If you do a search on the Martini Henry rifle you’ll get plenty of hits.

The weapon had a devastating effect when used en masse against closely packed opponents, the round would often break up just a few tens of yards out of the barrel and since each bullet was so large, even the fragments were quite capable of causing serious injury and death.

It was breech loaded rather than the recently withdrawn muzzle loaders and had a high rate of fire compared to previous British army weapons.

The Zulus did use captured weapons and did snipe at the soldiers trying to hold Rorkes drift, killing several of them.

At the end of it though the Zulu probably had no idea what was in store for them as the British massively reinforced, instead they must have thought they had left only an insignificant force alive out of the 2000 or so they had already killed.

11

Well I’ve learned a lot but still have a few questions.

Based on the movie I thought the Zulus were armed with rifles captured from the British at Isandhlwana; from what I’ve since read this is not correct. And certainly it makes sense that at the time the Zulus would be relatively inexperienced with how to use rifles effectively in battle.

I’ve also learned that the scene of the Zulus doing a chant to salute the British as fellow warriors probably never happened. Too bad, as to me two of the best scenes in the movie were this one, and the chanting they do before the battle starts. The movie does an excellent job of putting us in the position of the British - not being able to see the enemy about to attack, but knowing there must be a lot of them just out of sight because you can hear them coming. It sends chills up my spine every time.

But beyond all this rambling I do have one actual question. Were the rifles the British had repeating or not? In the movie they were certainly portrayed as single shot (each rank would fire, then have to reload while the other ranks fired). However a few in this thread have mentioned repeating rifles, so I’m not sure if I missed something or if I just don’t understand what “repeating” means. What’s the scoop?

12

That could have been producer Stanley Baker’s making a virtue of necessity. I’ve read (not at imdb.com, though) that they only used a hundred or so African extras for the battle scenes, and if you watch the movie this looks to be the case.

13

Is there a transcription and/or translation of the specific chants used by the Zulus?

I’m particularly fond of the one they used while marching into the attack, before charging.

(hijack) Go back and watch the opening battle scenes from Gladiator and you’ll hear the barbarians using the Zulu chant! I practically fell out of my seat when I heard it dubbed into the sound mix.

14

There are any number of good popular histories on the Zulu War of 1879. The most complete and readable is probably Donald R. Morris’s The Washing of the Spears, Simon and Schuster, 1965. Rourke’s Drift was the archetypical Victorian hero story. It is interesting that the American Isandhilwana, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, took place in 1876, just three years before.

casdave, if its not too much of a hijack, what can you tell us about handling the great guns on the Victory. Surely the poor old things can’t take a full service charge with a live round.

15

Venkman asked:

The Martini-Henry rifle was a single-shot rifle. No magazine, you loaded one round in, fired, and reloaded. Repeat as necessary.

A “repeating” rifle would have some sort of magazine to hold more than one round of ammunition, and would load a fresh round when you worked the bolt to extract an empty casing after firing.

I have a full Martini round in front of me as I write, and it is truly a monster. .45 calibre bullet, in a brass foil .577 “bottleneck” cartridge (black powder). The slug could quite easily go right through a man, and still knock over another in the next rank (as was intended: the Martini was very effective against massed enemy.) The black powder tended to coat the interior of the barrel and chamber, making the overheated rifle more prone to jam, as well as kick like a mule.

To return to your OP, the Zulu regiments that attacked at Rorke’s Drift were acting against their King’s orders: not only to stay within Zululand, but never to attack British troops in a prepared position. (The camp at Isandhlwana was too large an area for the troops left behind to guard it: with their single-shot rifles, they should have pulled back, formed a much smaller perimeter, and used their two-rank load-and-fire tactics to much greater advantage.) Having been in reserve at Isandhlwana, and hence left out of the plunder of the British camp, several regiments moved on to attack Rorke’s Drift to seek what they though would be easy pickings.

Morris’ Washing of the Spears is a terrific book; check your local university library for an out-of-print 1977 book by Frank Emery, called The Red Soldier, a collection of soldier’s letters from the Zulu War.

16

The Zulus were all professional soldiers, organized into regiments and forbidden to marry untill the had performed military service.

17

It was a good movie.

Here is my guess as to why the sequel wasn’t successful. Zulus don’t go to the movies that much.

18

In truth they were fibreglass replicas with a 2oz granulated powder charge for the loud part.
We were used as extras in a documentary about the Royal Navy, which had the working title “From Muskets of missiles”
I believe it was meant as an accompanying film to go with one of the Bond movies, but anyway I never did see it.

All the filming was done late at night as the ship is open to tourists during the day, I wonder how those living near to the dockyard felt at hearing four cannon going off in repeated bursts at one in the morning.

It was a bit of a giggle and well out of usual navy routine, they really wanted to have the gun deck a lot more crowded - like they were in Nelson’s day - but with only 4 cannon it was a struggle.In the end they made loads of smoke and had the cannon in the foreground with the rest of us just milling around in all the fog pretending we had our own gun or staggering around with stage blood, or at one point we decided to do a red indian rain dance in the background - hey it was pretty boring at times.

We also put those replica cannon on mobile platforms done up to look like a section of a wooden warship and the old style cannon drill became one of our displays, which we did in Berlin along with the Irish dancing, holding flaming torches aloft and wearing kilts, never saw the connection between that and the Royal Navy.

…and as for the last night of the Berlin Miltary Tattoo, well lets say we arrangeed a few surprise that were not originally in the program notes.

19 
    The film shows how they did it in the scenes where each line of men fires in turn. One firing while the other reloads.The resulting firepower is a match for any machinegun.
20

<hijack>

I’ve never been able to resolve whether this is a UL or not. Maybe you repeat viewers know the answer.

The UL has it that somewhere in the film, maybe in the opening scene across the hills and landscape, there’s a distant helicopter flying around. I’ve never seen it, anyone else ?
</hijack>