More than 100 years after war raged across the land of the Zulus, Lt Paul Frisby made history at official commemorations marking the Royal Navy’s role in the conflict.

Not since Queen Victoria ruled has a Naval officer laid a wreath at the graves of Senior Service casualties in the Zulu wars, it is believed.

Lt Frisby, who works at the Maritime Warfare School in HMS Collingwood, joined King Goodwill of the Zulus and Deputy British High Commissioner to South Africa Andy Sparks for the 125th anniversary events.

Ceremonies centred on the former battlefield at Isandlwana, where poor British leadership led to a massacre by Zulu warriors on January 22, 1879.

Among the 1,300 casualties for Queen and Empire that day was the sole sailor at Isandlwana, Signalman 2nd Class William Aynsley.

Aynsley, from the frigate HMS Active, was acting as batman to Lt Berkley Milne – who on the fateful day of battle was away with British commander Lord Chelmsford, leaving the Naval rating behind to tend to his kit.

Instead, Aynsley and his comrades found themselves confronted by an overwhelming Zulu force.

According to official reports, he was last seen “his back against a wagon wheel, keeping the Zulus at bay with his cutlass – but a Zulu crept up behind him and stabbed him through the spokes”.

The crushing defeat at Isandlwana was largely obscured by the heroic British defence of Rorke’s Drift which was trumpeted by the press and Government of the day – a partisan view which has endured to this day.

After the official commemoration, a British military party moved on to other battlefield sites from the Zulu and Boer conflicts in the KwaZulu-Natal region, including the memorials to HMS Boadicea and Dido at Mount Prospect, which lie next to the final resting place of Cdr Francis Romilly.

Romilly was the first British casualty of the Battle of Majuba Hill, against the Boers, on February 27, 1881, and at the time led the attached Naval brigade.