SS Mendi - Sinking

Sinking

On 21 February 1917, during World War I, the Mendi was transporting 823 members of the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps to France. She had sailed from Cape Town via Lagos, where a gun was fitted to her stern, to Plymouth, before proceeding towards Le Havre. At 5am, while under escort of the destroyer HMS Brisk, she was struck and cut almost in half by the SS Darro (11,000 BRT), an empty meat ship that was bound for Argentina.

616 South Africans (607 of them black troops) plus 30 British crew members died in the disaster.

The men on the ship of the South African Labour Corps came from a wide range of social backgrounds, and from a number of South African peoples, but the majority were from the rural areas of the Pondo Kingdom in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Most of them had never seen the sea before this voyage. Very few of them could swim. The White South Africans were officers and NCOs. Some men were killed outright in the collision, and some were trapped below decks. Many however gathered on the listing deck of the Mendi.

Oral history records that the men met their fate with great dignity. Their chaplain, Reverend Isaac Dyobha, is reported to have calmed the panicked men by raising his arms aloft and crying out in a loud voice:

"Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do...you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers...Swazis, Pondos, Basotho...so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."

Notably, the crew of the Darro made no attempt to rescue survivors. Lifeboats from HMS Brisk rowed among the survivors, trying to rescue them.

The investigation into the accident found the captain of the Darro, Henry W Stump, to be at fault for "having travelled at a dangerously high speed in thick fog, and of having failed to ensure that his ship emitted the necessary fog sound signals." As a result, the captain of the Darro had his licence suspended for a year. His failure to render assistance to the Mendi's survivors has been the source of much controversy. Some historians have suggested that racial prejudice influenced his conduct, while others hold that he merely lost his nerve.

The incident remains a somewhat forgotten aspect of World War I, both in terms of the loss of life and in relation to the role of African labourers in the war.