SS Mendi

1917

Isle of Wight fog, the Darro did not stop Location: English Channel, off the Isle of Wight · Coordinates: 50.52°N 1.10°W · Casualties: 646 · Survivors: 267 · Depth: 42 m · Cause: collision — Rammed in heavy fog by the Royal Mail Line's SS Darro off St Catherine's Point at 04:57 on 21 February 1917 while carrying the South African Native Labour Corps to France. The Darro's bow penetrated her starboard side. The Darro did not stop to rescue; the Mendi sank in twenty minutes. · Fate: war grave · protected · Type: troopship · British and African Steam Navigation · Tonnage: 4,222 tons · Crew: 90 · Flag: United Kingdom · Launched: 1905 British troop transport, carrying the South African Native Labour Corps, 616 black South Africans bound for the Western Front. Rammed in fog in the English Channel by the Royal Mail Line's Darro on the morning of 21 February 1917. 646 dead, mostly men from the Xhosa, Mpondo, Basotho, and Zulu homelands, and the Darro did not stop to rescue. Suppressed by white South Africa for eighty years; today her memorial at Hollybrook Cemetery is the centrepiece of the South African state's war-dead commemoration. 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 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 compl