rorkesdriftvc.com :: View topic

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 9:27 pm

We have often discussed the troops eating breakfast on the 22nd, but what exactly would breakfast have been on that fateful day in 1879?

AMB

Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2007 10:21 pm

Hi AMB,

This is from memory and no doubt if I'm wrong we shall be notified in due course but I am sure breakfast would have composed of slaughter or bully (tinned for the uninitiated) beef, hard army biscuit that saved so many at Rorke's Drift along with tea and coffee. The Officers would have had little better. Salt and sugar were at hand to add a bit of taste.

I can't recall whom but did not one of the survivors mention eggs, bacon, sausage, black pudding and orange juice in his account? My memory is a bit vague, it might have been Trooper J. Oke of the Natal Mounted Police?

Cheers Cool

Glenn

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 12:46 am

I'm sure I've heard mention that the column that marched out in the early morning of the 22nd were encouraged by the officers saying that the breakfast porridge was following them in the pots but how this was intended to be achieved, I know not! It could be just another of those legendary myths.

Dawn

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:52 am

Dawn/Glen,

Many thanks for your replies. I've been reading Anstruther's (94th of Foot) later accounts of the war & he certainly seems to have eaten fairly well (for one deployed in the Field in 1879).

I suspect the fuel not flavour maxim was lost somewhere in the mid 20th Century - thankfully. Modern ration packs are excellent!

AMB

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 11:10 am

Andrew

Your reference to eating well on campaign in Zululand does not surprise me. There are a number of references to the serious problems in that respect suffered by the troops at Rorke's Drift after Isandlwana. On the other hand, the officers of the 2/24th seemed to do quite well:

"I am still as right as a trivet. I must say it is uncommonly slow here, but we get plenty to eat & drink which is a great thing. The other night we had two fellows to dine with us, making a party of it; we had splendid giblet soup, salmon (tinned) cutlets, Beef Rissoles & ROAST GOOSE, we were to have pudding but it didn�t come off somehow. We drank beer & brandy. Tonight we are to have our first pudding, having hit upon some raisins in a box one of our fellows left here."
Letter of Lt Charles Curll, 2/24th, to his mother dated12th February 1879 - Killie Campbell Africana Library, KCM 89/41/1.

Dawn

I think that your reference to porridge was to be attributed to the NNC who left with Lonsdale on the morning of the 21st to reconnoitre the Malakatha hills:

"To any who watched our departure as dawn broke [on January 21st] we must have afforded some considerable amusement going off as we did like a swarm of bees in a sort of "Devil take the hinder-most" fashion. The Natives, who had been cooking and eating most of the night, still had pots full of smoking hot porridge which they brought on to parade with them, determined to leave nothing in the shape of food behind, and as it would never have done to take any notice of this irregularity we let them travel at their own pace and get well ahead so as to snatch time to finish their meal."
Daphne Child, (ed.) Zulu War Journal of Col. Henry Harford, p.23.

KIS ( ex CRMP)

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:35 pm

Famously Redvers Buller's supper parties were not to be missed. Percy Marling VC was invited to dine with him at Korti (in a tent) during the Gordon Relief expedition and records having 7 courses!! Plus the inevitable champagne of course, cases of which seem to have accompanied Buller everywhere he went.

M

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 2:51 pm

Redvers Buller certainly seemed to know how one should campaign. I once read somewhere that he had ammo taken out of ox carts (and left behind in base locations) so more champagne could be carried forward to his HQ. Quite right too!!

AMB

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 8:14 pm

Keith...any idea which English company provisioned the troops? Guess they had a contract to make that food for them........House of Lea & Perrins?...........can't eat a steak without it!)... Wink

....

Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2007 10:58 pm

Rich

I really don't have a clue but it certainly wasn't Heinz, who at that time probably only had seven varieties!

KIS

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 12:07 am

Must have been a lucky number for them, then, otherwise it might have been 'the late Heinz' !.

My guess is Halliburtons.

No doubt Pusser's supplied the rum, and Pol Roger the Champagne.

There were the grog sellers supplying the infamous Natal Gin, or 'Cape Mist', bannished by Chelmsford, I believe.
In addition to the local maize porridge, on record is corn on the cob, bags of mealies, corned beef, slaughtered beef, army biscuit, hardtack, and bread, and local vegetables as could be purchased, I guess by the Quartermaster, and rum and beer, and tobacco.
I seem to recall reference to a bakery, which would have covered the bread, and probably the biscuit.

Sean

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 8:59 am

Now you are all guessing - but not far from the mark.

Lt William Whitelocke Lloyd refers to using Lea & Perrin's Worcester Sauce to improve the quality of the meat supplied in a letter home. From memory the date of the letter is 6 May 1879 and addressed to his old school chum La Terriere.

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 10:15 am

Martin,

Have you ever considered a sponsoring deal with Lea & Perrin's? What an advertising campaign that would be! Very Happy

Cheers,

Glenn

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 12:06 pm

Martin..nice to know Lt Lloyd and I have the same taste.. Wink

..I can see the ad campaign.....L&P..official sauce of the AZW...

Sean..thanks for that ref on Halliburton's...wondering if the 24th liked their "bacon butties" ....

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 1:25 pm

Sean

It seems that Evelyn Wood was well-known for insisting on fresh bread for his men - it was baked almost daily throughout the war.

KIS

Posted: Thu Apr 19, 2007 4:50 pm

Suprisingly alot of the bottled foods we know today were available, pickled foods in particular. Tinned foods in large quantities.
Battlefield glass that I picked up and debris in St Vincents point to wide mouth pickle jars, also Jam, I found bits of E T Pinks jam jars. Lea and Perrins and their big competitor Goodall and Backhouse (also a worcester sauce). Coffee in the form of Camp.

In the collection at Fugitives drift is also a pot lid fragment which I identified as Burgess and Co's anchovy Paste, was this to go on Chelmsfords toasties?

In one particular Donga myself and Mel Hunt I discoverd the remains of a cess pit that had evindently washed away, with large pieces of glass bottles.

Check out the article I wrote about my excavation of a C1885 Victorian refuse dump, you'll be surprised at the similar things the Victorian army took on campaign http://www.archive.long-eaton.com/carters1.asp
Neil