In January 1879, a garrison of roughly 150 British soldiers at a remote mission station in Natal held off an assault by thousands of Zulu warriors, just hours after the same Zulu army had annihilated a much larger British force at Isandlwana. This film reconstructs the battle hour by hour, using historians, battlefield locations, and dramatized reenactments to explain how the defenders at Rorke's Drift converted a supply depot into a makeshift fort out of biscuit boxes and mealie bags. It examines the tactical decisions, the desperate hand-to-hand fighting through the night, and the eleven Victoria Crosses later awarded to defenders, the most ever given for a single action by one regiment. The film also places the battle in its wider political context, noting how the British government used the victory to soften public reaction to the disaster at Isandlwana. The result is a detailed account of both the fighting itself and the propaganda that followed it.