At about five in the morning of 12 March 1879, in mist on the Intombe (Ntombe) River north of Zululand, Zulu warriors rushed a loosely formed wagon laager held by a company of the British 80th Regiment. In a few minutes the camp was overrun and its commander, Captain David Moriarty, was killed with most of his men. On the far bank Sergeant Anthony Booth led the survivors three miles to safety and won the Victoria Cross; the officer who should have led them rode off for help and was later court-martialed.
A convoy stuck in the rain
The Anglo-Zulu War had begun in January 1879, and on 22 January the Zulu army had destroyed a British column at Isandlwana. North of Zululand, the 80th Regiment held a post at the German mission settlement of Lüneburg. In early March, at the end of the rainy season, the wagon masters bringing it a supply convoy from Derby gave up and abandoned their wagons in the mud near Myer's Drift on the Ntombe, a few miles from the post.1
Major Charles Tucker sent Captain Moriarty with a company of the 80th to bring the wagons in. By the time Moriarty had gathered them, the river had risen in flood behind him. He got two wagons across to the south bank under Lieutenant Henry Harward, with Colour Sergeant Booth and 34 men, while the rest stayed on the north bank in a loose inverted V with its ends on the river.2
Tucker inspected the camp and had grave misgivings about it, but ordered no change. During the night the river fell, leaving a gap of some 20 yards between the ends of the laager and the water, which the sentries did not notice.3
Five o'clock on 12 March
Zulu scouts had been watching the convoy for days from the hills, where the Tafelkop was said to be the refuge of the renegade prince Mbilini. At five in the morning, as the mist lifted, the Zulus came through the gap, and in an instant the camp was in chaos. A few men put up a stubborn resistance, but it was quickly over; men who tried to escape into the swollen river drowned or were cut down, for few of them could swim.4
Harward's party on the south bank gave what covering fire it could, and then some of the Zulus crossed the river toward it. Harward told Booth to fall back on a farmhouse and rode off to Lüneburg for help.5
Sergeant Booth's retreat
Booth kept his men together and kept up a steady fire while slowly retiring. His Victoria Cross citation says he rallied a few men on the south bank and covered the retreat of 50 soldiers and others for three miles, and that without his coolness not one man would have escaped. He was promoted to color sergeant the next day, and Victoria Cross Online adds that he received the Cross from Queen Victoria at Windsor in June 1880.6
Tucker rode out with mounted men and found the camp looted and the dead stripped and mutilated; he wrote of a fearful and horrid sight. Lord Chelmsford ordered Harward to be court-martialed. He was tried in February 1880, and according to BritishEmpire.co.uk he argued that, as the only man with a horse, he had to be the one to go for help. He was acquitted, but Sir Garnet Wolseley condemned his conduct, and the Duke of Cambridge had Wolseley's rebuke read out to every regiment in the army, BritishEmpire.co.uk records.7
The dead
The battlefield guide Pat Rundgren gives the total losses as 61 soldiers and 18 civilians killed, and notes that the names of the 80th's dead are inscribed at Lichfield Cathedral. BritishEmpire.co.uk puts the dead at Moriarty and 80 men. No reliable figure for Zulu losses is given in these sources.8
Intombe came less than seven weeks after Isandlwana, told in our article on the Battle of Isandlwana.
Note: casualty counts differ slightly between sources, and the text names the source for each figure.
