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Coghill - His Departure from Isandlwana Battlefield
Jamie


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 149
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Hi guys,

We seem to have a good handle on Melvill's departure from the battlefield but what about Coghill?

I am looking for a little bit more information on how, where, when and why he left the battlefield at Isandlwana.

I know there were a few eyewitness statements to say he was spotted on the Fugitives Trail but how did he get there, when and why did he leave the firing line? I believe he was also able to reach the Fugitives Drift before Melvill.

Also, in a way relating to this question, the two times I have been to Fugitives Drift I have not as yet actually seen "Coffin Rock". Could it be submerging through time and does anyone have a theory to the point that it has moved from mid river in 1879 to just about on the Zululand bank of the Buffalo in 2008?

Thanks as always,

Regards,

Jamie

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Jamie here is two links to eye witness accounts with some reference to Melvill and Coghill, to be getting on with.

http://www.richthofen.com/smith-dorrien/dorrien01c.htm



http://www.northeastmedals.co.uk/britishguide/zulu/despatch4_isandhlwana_isandlwana.htm

Lieutenant Curling account at the bottom.
Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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Jamie

With regard to the so-called coffin-shaped rock, provided I have identified it correctly in my own photos of the Drift, it is much nearer to the Zulu side than the centre of the river. If I'm looking at the right one in my snaps, it is almost at right angles to the Zulu bank - certainly more than 45 deg. It is rather dark. Is this recognisable in any of your own pictures?

It is (again, only if I've identified it correctly) just downstream from a row of rough looking rocks, and perhaps 50 or 100 yards (no figures in photos to help me with distance) upstream of a much larger group of rocks, both groups being on - and also just offshore of - the Zulu (i.e. left) bank. The rock is not at the foot of "Smith-Dorrien's leap" but alongside where the ground eases gently down to the river. Although my photos are taken from above, the ones containing a view of this rock are from the Natal (right) bank, so the exact shape of the rock (i.e. "coffin-like") can't be confirmed. I also realise that the other groups of rocks may not necessarily assist pinpointing the coffin-shaped one because it will depend on how deep the river was in your own snaps, as the whole bed is rocky when exposed.

My own photos of this area taken from the Natal bank, near M's & C's grave, show the river reasonably wide but fairly shallow over all the rocks - possibly even wadeable right across in certain points. A couple of days later it was in fairly full spate and fast flowing, and although the little sandy patch on the Zulu side was still exposed, the actual river banks were much wider and I calculated at the time the river was about 100/120 yds wide & obviously deeper than a few days earlier. I've since understood that this guessed width was probaby an over-estimate although I am sure it was at least 80 yds or so of unbroken, fast-flowing water across. I wouldn't have dreamed of trying to swim across in those conditions but David Rattray's young sons got me over! I think the coffin shaped rock may have been submerged or almost so on that day, although I was not looking for it so could easily have missed it - was the river deep when you were there, perhaps explaining why you may not have recognised it? If it is still poking above the water when the river is in fairly full spate (as it must have been on 22 Jan 1879) I would guess it is about 10 to 20 yds from the Zulu bank - but still not near the centre. I suspect the rock is too heavy to shift in the water but that the edge of the shore can easily change in 130 yrs, let alone the changes from day to day. In my snaps the rock is right on the water's edge and has about 10 or 20 yds of sand between it and the present day bushes - if I've got the scale right.

I can't recall hearing the rock being described as coffin-shaped before hearing DR's DotDM tapes about a dozen years ago. I presume he was quoting a description from Higginson's report, unless he guessed the location and described the shape himself for the first time in his tapes (and lectures)? Anyone know?

Peter
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Sawubona


Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 1179
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Someone else will have to do the work for me on this one since I can't find a copy, but I believe Donald Morris refers to it as a "coffin shaped rock" in TWOTS. I recognize he's a bit out of favor as an author in these here parts and I'm not suggesting that he coined the description, but if I'm correct about his use of it, then he certainly contributed significantly to it's popular usage.
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Jamie


Joined: 01 Sep 2005
Posts: 149
Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Thanks for the help guys,

This is my take on Coffin Rock.

http://www.isandlwana1879.co.uk/index_files/Page5456.htm

Regards,

Jamie

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Alan
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Joined: 30 Aug 2005
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This is the rock from our trip.

http://www.rorkesdriftvc.com/visit/22jan.htm

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Leslie James Knight


Joined: 02 Nov 2005
Posts: 54
Location: Manchester
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Hello All,just to say ( again ) T.W.O.T.S. is and will remain the finest work ever attempted on the subject of the A.Z.W.mistakes he made a few.(sounds like my way )but then he would make a few mistakes.a C.I.A. official posted to berlin, he's pulling together all the material in his SPARE TIME..its a defining epic written before 99.9% of us had even heard of the A.Z.W.we had yet to see the movie ZULU the following year,what is this irrational bias against Morris! i thank him so much, i still remember the impact of reading AND digesting the breath taking granduer of an Africa which until then i had no idea. having always been captured by the " dark continent " through such author's as Ryder-Haggard (Shepstone's Staff ),my point is, i have a modest library connected with the A.Z.W. i have most of the popular books i buy them soon as they come out. my last two being.Knight's companion to. and i reserved the Harford book as soon as i was notified. so I've got most of the usual suspect's i.e.. Ritter, Coupland,Mossop,moodie, et al, I've even got Jenkinson's Amazulu. which i believe is one of the rarest book's on the plantet. the constant re-packeging and re-hashing by SOME of the current crop of writer's i find quite distasteful.but i buy them any way. we remember as humans defining moments in time. for me reading T.W.O.T.S. was certainly one of those moments. it gave me a passion for a subject that i know will endure till I'm no longer on this earth. so i say in defence of Morris, enough is enough! is there no one out there who feels the same as me. do we not in reality owe him an enourmous debt of thank's. or is there another reason why he is slandered so badly. i.e., he's American and he got in first.As for Coghill i would not have thoght he was on the firing line as such, mobility,even on horse back he must have been in so much pain.regard's L.J.Knight

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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Jamie & Alan

We concur on the position and identity of the rock! The nearby configuration of other rocks and waterline foliage confirms it without doubt. It is indeed submerged in your photos, Jamie, as your captions correctly indicate. It is still remarkable, however, how much foliage has appeared and how rivulets have changed since I took my snaps (in 2000). The increase of foliage is, of course, one of the features which contrasts with the 1879 landscape in Zululand generally.

Sawubona

Just checked Morris's account, but he describes it only as "a large rock just breaking the surface." Unless Higginson mentions its shape, then I'd presume David Rattray was the first to consider it resembles a coffin and to say so. (Morris presumably also saw it, though, as he decribes the suroundings in fair detail). Of course, if Higginson omits both the shape and the rock (I'm not sure if he does) then Morris would be the originator of the very rock itself - and then we really are in trouble! (I've never been completely reassured by this aspect of the story - i.e. the rock, any rock - but if Higginson is specific then at least it's a starter, even allowing for all the unpleasant doubts cast on his account of the crossing and escape. Can't think of any other eye-witneses.

Peter
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Sawubona


Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 1179
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LJK,
I seem to have pushed a button here! When I mentioned I couldn't find a copy of TWOTS it was because I was looking for my munitions grade reading copy, the paperback that's missing the front cover. At such a late hour, I didn't feel like unwrapping any of my other copies which are accruing value in archival semi-storage. I have several first editions with the dust jackets in "as new condition" as well as a couple without the dust jackets and two of the second, BOTMC printings with the brown covers and no photographs. I would have to guess that I have nine or ten copies all told-- maybe more. Among my biggest regrets is that none of them are signed by Morris himself, although I do have a cowhide shield that he purchased for a gift while on a visit to Zululand. So yes, I am emphatically in your camp!

I've long been in awe of the sheer lyricism of his writing. It's a rare author indeed who is blessed with his gift for presenting a mundane detail in a sentence that resonates with the reader even after the book is returned to the shelf. Just look at the first sentence of the Prologue: " It was an endless land of scattered riches and infinite variety." Short and lacking any grammatical complexity , it's beautifully crafted nonetheless-- a result of hanging out with Hemingway perhaps? Most writers spend their lifetimes searching for the art behind superlative writing -- few ever find it. As with painting, the mechanics of composition can be taught and learned (I don't think I paid enough attention in those classes LOL), but not so with the "heart". Although I'm sure that Donald Morris tediously wrote and re-wrote many sentences, I'll still have to say that he was simply a naturally gifted author.

Some Morris-bashers overlook the vast scope of TWOTS as well. They seem to forget that this book isn't just about Rorke's Drift or just about Isandlwana. It's a comprehensive history of South Africa that ranges from the arrival of the Bantu (controversy alert!) to the present time. Talk about an ambitious undertaking.

Yeah Leslie, I'm definitely in your camp.
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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
Posts: 1797
Location: Near Canterbury, Kent, England.
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Further to my post above, Patrick Coghill quotes verbatim from H's report, so I've just checked. H mentions - almost in passing - "the rock to which I clung" and just that. No location, no description, certainly no coffin shape. He does, however, mention that he and Melvill were about 25 yds from the Zulu bank when they and Coghill were being fired upon.

Penn Symons also mentions "another rock to which H was clinging." The story is embellished a little further (after more talks with H?) but there is no elaboration of the rock's nature or position. (Calm waters in its lee are mentioned, though). I know of no other potential eye-witnesses and we must bear in mind that H's testimony about the events after coming ashore on the Natal bank, supposedly with M & C, were angrily dismissed by Barker & Tarboton's group.

Does anyone have any evidence for the identity, location or shape of the rock(s) mentioned in Higginson's or Symons' reports? Given the doubts on Higginson, I suggest nothing at all is known about the last actions and deaths of the two officers from the time they entered the water to the time their bodies were found, although I can think of no reason to suggest H was inaccurate about - or would have made up - the "about turn" of Coghill into the river. It may all come down to balancing H's and Barker's accounts. Barker's account makes it clear that he and his colleagues considered Higginson an out-and-out cad, a liar and a coward, whose story about his involvement with M & C at the river could not have been anything other than a complete and utter fabrication. And he is the only claimed eye-witness. I forget what suspicions about his account were publicly aired at the time but I recall seeing the father of one of the two officers coming to H's rescue in the press, but don't remember where.

Unless there is some contemporary detail somewhere, I suspect Morris spotted what he thought may have been the rock mentioned by Higginson (and therefore afterwards by Penn Symons), and that David Rattray noticed its remarkable shape and commented on it in his lectures and tapes. I think there is a danger of this story of "the coffin-shaped rock" (nowadays apparently simply "the coffin rock") becoming somehow established as a sort of certain fact merely through repetition, thereby becoming one of the "well known landmarks" of the AZW. Or am I alone in this?

Peter
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Mmm
Leslie James Knight


Joined: 02 Nov 2005
Posts: 54
Location: Manchester
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Peter, i don't know if this help's at all but the full page illustration on page 224 of The Illustrated London News, Sept the 6th 1879 show's a contempory sketch of said rock. regard's Leslie.

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Ken Gillings


Joined: 23 Apr 2006
Posts: 61
Location: KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
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Bear in mind that Cyclones Demoina and Imboa (in the 1980s) resulted in the course of the Mzinyathi River being altered and huge rocks were deposited all over the place, from the bend in the river above Sothondoza's Drift to the gorge below the bluff (i.e., in the vicinity of where the Colours were recovered). I'm not too certain how to attach photographs to this reply but if anyone would like any, please let me know on [email protected] and I'll e-mail you some (one of them taken in 1970 and others more recently).
Regards,
Ken

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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That's extremely interesting, Ken. Such a development emphasises that nothing is necessarily what it seems initially. The power of KZN's rivers when in spate has long been legendary but the alterations done by those cyclones seems astonishing.

Leslie - thank you for the note of that illustration. I know the one you mean, and of course it was - like nearly all the pictures which appeared in the illustrated press of 1879 - an artist's impression, usually from a woodcut or taken from a sketch made on the spot or from descriptions of participants. Obviously, no-one in London had seen "the" rock, and even if one of the artists had journeyed to Sothondose's Drift to sketch the area in 1879, he would have had no idea of any particular rock being involved, let alone what it looked like. M & C were dead and I think we can take it that Higginson never returned to the spot. More to the point, no contemporary physical description - even to the extent that it may have been a "large" one - was offered by either H or Penn Symons. The area was littered with individual rocks and groups of rocks of all sizes and shapes, below and above the water.

True to form, Morris seems to have been the first to decide that the rock was "large" (but I'll be delighted if someone can find an earlier reference). The idea that the rock itself may have been identified comes, as far as I can see, from Morris in the 1960s - a discovery which I'm afraid I would put on a par with his notorious copper band - and I do not remember reading or hearing anything about a specific shape of the rock (and certainly nothing to do with coffins) before the 1990s. Still, someone else might well have done?

Peter
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Mel


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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A few months ago Ken kindly sent me some of his photos. One of his photos was taken in 1962 overlooking the Drift. I happened to take some photos from the same position and it seems, to me, that the so called coffin rock has not moved since 1962. Both photos show the rock about the same height on dry ground so the sandy bed has also not moved.
I can find no reference to a "coffin rock" in TWOTS. So where, indeed, did the name originate?

I have attached a link to the two photos for comparison.http://community.webshots.com/album/568430538hiBDKR?vhost=community
Double click on the photos for the larger versions.

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Peter Ewart


Joined: 31 Aug 2005
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Mel

Interesting. But have you altered your post since this morning, when you thought that the rock would have been submerged on 22 Jan 1879 provided the sandy bed had not altered, and that you did not consider this rock to be the one which Higginson claimed to have clung onto?

This may seem a typical AZW anorak's obsession with the minutiae (& probably is!) but it can also be quite illuminating in more ways than one with regard to primary sources. (Incidentally, I recall a hilarious conversation with the late David Rattray about these little things, when - on the question of his having being nit-picked by people on some of the minute details in his talks & tapes - he lamented that universities would soon be dishing out PhDs for work based on, for example, trying to identify the owner of Pip the dog at R/Drift!!!)

Thanks for the two photo comparisons. Excellent - but who is sitting in the 1962 one, incidentally? On the question of the sandy riverbed, I do wonder whether this can have altered after all. My pictures show the rock standing at least as high as in others' photos, if not higher, and yet is sitting on the edge - water on one side, sand the other. Being in the water, it should be lower down I'd have thought. With regard to it perhaps having been submerged on 22 Jan., this seems very plausible to me too. After all, if the river was in full spate, deep and very wide, then it was much deeper than in any of our photos. I am sure the conditions of 22 Jan would have been worse than the day I crossed, when it was deep, fast-flowing and extremely wide. No rocks to be seen in the river where we actually crossed. (David Rattray only agreed to the crossing after very careful thought). Unfortunately, although crossing approximately under the spot of M & C's climb, I can't now be certain exactly where. On the question of whether it would have been submerged on 22 Jan 1879, which seems perfectly feasible, my only doubt is that David, who must have known the (modern) topography down there better than any living person, must surely have considered this point also, having no doubt seen the river in spate many times.

I quoted Higginson earlier (from Patrick Coghill) but I now see his quote has not come from Higginson's (only?) full statement held in WO33/34 (Enclosure 3 in No 96) [see Keith Smith, Select Documents, 2006] but, despite inverted commas, appears to paraphrase Higginson & Penn Symons. Higginson does call it "a large rock, which I held onto." From this, it could still be any rock among the scores in that stretch of water.

Morris - now no longer the first to call it "large" - visited KZN at least once during his research, I believe. His description of the rock tends - in my opinion - to suggest he had seen one which he thought would do, and even thought perhaps was the very one. David Rattray admired Morris & drew on his accounts extensively in his own stories. He follows Morris very closely indeed at this particular juncture, even to the extent of mentioning Melvill "careening off rock after rock" - Morris's very words. I wonder if David thought - or knew even - that Morris had once believed that he had identified to his own satisfaction the very rock on which Higginson and Melvill met. Years later, Morris was, I believe, at FDL, around the time that the DotDM tapes were published (during S Africa's first democratic election in 1994, when Morris was a local poll station observer at Isandlwana, perhaps?) and may or may not have drawn David's attention to this rock. David may already have been perfectly aware of it, of course. He certainly would not have missed its distinctive shape. Morris may have been the first to dwell on the Melvill/Higginson rock in TWOTS; either of them may have been the first to suggest one of these rocks must have been the one, but I do not recall ever hearing of the rock being described as "coffin-shaped" before David described it as such in his lectures. Today, we now have "Melvill's Rock" and "the coffin-shaped rock" in a number of published works, although - as far as I can see - there appears to be very little concrete evidence.

The above is not, of course, intended in any way as the slightest criticism of David's approach. I am as much an avid admirer of his inimitable talks as anyone, but he would always be the first to call himself "a story-teller and not a historian."

If, of course, Barker's and not Higginson's story is to be believed (in Stalker etc., and expanded on via oral history by his grandson Denis in Zulus at Bay - not a primary source nor an impartial one, as he concedes) and that Barker retraced his steps from the top to rescue Higginson down near the bottom when looking for Hawkins, and that Higginson rode B's horse up the steep slope and out of the gorge, then the whole M & C story of Higginson's falls down completely - and he is our only eye-witness for M & C between the Zulu bank and the discovery of their dead bodies a fortnight later. It would be a very strange story for Barker, Tarboton etc to invent - and for what reason, other than their genuine disgust at his behaviour with B's horse and his claimed subsequent lies a few minutes later ?

Getting too long now - and all this over just a far away rock!

Peter
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Coghill - His Departure from Isandlwana Battlefield
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