SS Mendi

The Vessel

The SS Mendi was a British passenger and cargo vessel of the British and African Steam Navigation Company (Elder Dempster Line), commissioned at the Alexander Stephen yard at Linthouse, Glasgow, on 20 September 1905. She was 113 metres long, 4,230 gross tons, and had been designed for the Liverpool-Lagos and Liverpool-Calabar West African trade. Her peacetime role had been as a general-cargo and passenger vessel serving the British West African colonies.

At the outbreak of the First World War she was requisitioned as a British troop transport and was assigned, from late 1916 onwards, to the specific role of transporting members of the South African Native Labour Corps to France. The SANLC had been established in 1916 as a non-combatant labour unit of the South African Defence Force, specifically for the movement of supplies, the building of defensive works, and general logistic support for the British Army on the Western Front. The SANLC was composed of approximately 21,000 black South African volunteers who had been recruited from across the Union of South Africa, with specific concentrations from the Eastern Cape, Natal, Zululand, and the Transvaal.

Her master in February 1917 was Captain Henry Yardley, 52, a career Elder Dempster mariner.

The Voyage

On 21 January 1917 SS Mendi departed Cape Town on her final voyage, carrying 607 members of the 5th Battalion of the South African Native Labour Corps, along with 217 members of the battalion's white officer and non-commissioned officer complement, 16 ship's crew, and 77 support personnel. Her destination was Le Havre, France, via Plymouth. The SANLC men aboard were predominantly from the Xhosa, Zulu, Pondo, and Mpondomise communities of the Eastern Cape; their battalion had been raised at the Rosebank training camp at Cape Town in October 1916.

She proceeded north through the South Atlantic and called at Plymouth on 19 February 1917 for additional stores and for instructions. Her final leg, from Plymouth to Le Havre, was to be conducted in escort of the British destroyer HMS Brisk. The weather in the English Channel on 21 February 1917 was heavy fog; visibility was 50-100 metres.

At 04:57 on 21 February 1917, SS Mendi was operating in the English Channel approximately 18 kilometres off the Isle of Wight. Visibility was extremely poor; the Mendi was sounding her foghorn at regular intervals in accordance with standard fog-navigation procedure. Approaching her from the opposite direction was the SS Darro, a Royal Mail Line cargo ship of 11,484 gross tons, which was travelling at an estimated 14 knots (despite the severe fog, which should have required reduced speed under the prevailing collision-avoidance regulations).

The Disaster

The SS Darro struck SS Mendi at 04:57 on 21 February 1917. The Darro's reinforced bow penetrated Mendi's starboard side approximately 20 feet below the main deck. The damage was substantial: Mendi's No. 2 hold flooded immediately; her electrical power was lost; she began to list to starboard.

Captain Yardley's response was the standard one: sound the abandon-ship signal and lower the lifeboats. The Darro's master, Captain Henry Winchester Stump, did not immediately come to the aid of the stricken Mendi. The specific reason for Stump's delay has been the subject of continuing debate: the British inquiry found that Stump had mistakenly believed Mendi was a warship (a suspicion given some plausibility by Mendi's wartime grey paint and the destroyer escort); others have argued that Stump's reluctance reflected his own damaged ship's condition (Darro had sustained substantial damage in the collision).

The delay in rescue was, whatever its cause, substantial. Darro did not begin to lower her boats for the rescue of Mendi survivors until approximately 06:30 on 21 February 1917, an hour and a half after the collision. By that time Mendi had sunk completely.

SS Mendi sank at approximately 05:20 on 21 February 1917 at approximately 50°27′N 1°30′W in approximately 42 metres of water in the English Channel. Of her 917 aboard, 646 died: 607 South African Native Labour Corps men, 17 officers, 4 nurses, 2 officers' wives, and 16 ship's crew. The dead were overwhelmingly from the SANLC complement: 607 of the 627 SANLC men aboard died.

The Legacy

The specific circumstances of the Mendi loss became the subject of a sustained South African cultural and political response that continues to the present day. The SANLC men's conduct in the final moments of the sinking, recorded through survivor testimony and preserved in oral tradition, included a specific ritual known subsequently as the "Death Drill": Reverend Isaac Dyobha, the battalion's chaplain, led the men in a traditional stamping dance on the sloping deck as the ship settled, with the specific purpose of reaffirming their spiritual readiness for death. Witnesses described the sound of 600 men stamping in rhythm on the tilting deck, and the prayer in Xhosa that Reverend Dyobha led.

The South African government of the Union of South Africa (then under Prime Minister Jan Smuts, who would later succeed Louis Botha as Prime Minister) did not provide adequate compensation to the families of the SANLC dead at the time of the sinking; the SANLC men had been recruited under specific employment terms that did not include the death benefits applicable to white South African military personnel. The post-apartheid government of South Africa (from 1994 onwards) has specifically addressed this historical grievance: the names of the 607 SANLC dead have been formally commemorated at the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton, England, and at the Mendi Memorial in Cape Town since the 1990s.

The Mendi has become, in post-apartheid South African memory, the single most significant symbol of black South African contribution to the First World War and, by extension, to the broader Allied cause. The Isaac Dyobha stamping dance has been incorporated into South African military traditions. The Order of Mendi for Bravery (established by the South African government in 2002) is named for the ship and is the highest South African gallantry decoration for acts of bravery in peacetime. Mendi Day (21 February) was declared a South African national memorial day in 1994.

The wreck of SS Mendi was located in 1974 by British divers approximately 18 kilometres off St Catherine's Point on the Isle of Wight. She lies on her starboard side at 42 metres depth. The wreck is protected under UK legislation (Protection of Wrecks Act 1973) since 2009. The South African government has requested British cooperation in the long-term preservation of the site.

The 607 SANLC dead are commemorated at the Hollybrook Memorial in Southampton, at the Mendi Memorial in Cape Town, and at individual memorials in each of the Eastern Cape and Natal districts from which the men had been recruited. The 40 white officers, crew, and civilian dead are commemorated on the Portsmouth Naval Memorial and at the Merchant Navy Memorial in London. The Mendi remains the single most significant black South African casualty event of either World War.