Patrick William Forbes

Cecil Rhodes and Leander Starr Jameson hoped to capture Lobengula and quickly end the 1893 war in Matabeleland.

On the night of 3 December 1893, knowing the Ndebele would not attack in the dark, Wilson sent back Captain Napier with 2 men with an urgent message requesting that Forbes come to his aid immediately and bring his 2 Maxim guns before daybreak.

The next morning, Wilson and his men discovered that the Shangani river was now completely flooded due to rains and it could not be navigated without extensive fire cover, and Forbes was nowhere to be seen.

In desperation, Wilson sent the Americans Frederick Russell Burnham and Pete Ingram, and an Australian named Gooding, to cross the Shangani and seek reinforcements.

Miraculously, the 3 scouts succeeded, but when they reached Forbes the battle raging at the main column was just as intense as the one they had just left.

Forbes, running out of supplies, retreated to Bulowayo, his column harassed continuously by the Ndebele.

Forbes handed de facto control of the retreat to Piet Raaff, a veteran of the Anglo-Zulu War.

[citation needed] Nonetheless, Forbes later became Commissioner to the BSAC territory in North-Eastern Rhodesia (now Zambia), from July 1895 to June 1897.