'Let us die like brothers' - SS Mendi soldiers remembered

100 years after it sank with 832 African soldiers aboard, killing 616, the legend of the SS Mendi lives on, writes Andrew Unsworth

Tuesday marks the centenary of the tragic sinking of the SS Mendi - on February 21 1917, with the loss of 646 lives. Of the dead, 616 were South Africans with 607 being black soldiers, and 30 crew.

It has been a century that saw the Mendi and her men commemorated, then almost forgotten officially despite living on in people's memories and retold in song, and finally revived and recalled as one of the most heroic tragedies in South African military history.

What makes the SS Mendi story so powerfully moving is the legend that many of the doomed men gathered on deck where they were calmed by Isaac Williams Wauchope, formerly a minister in the Congregational Native Church of Fort Beaufort.

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"Be quiet and calm, my countrymen," survivors reported him as saying. "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."

The legend of the bare-footed death dance on the tilting deck has been repeated in South African oral history ever since, and many argue that it must be based on a real event. Another tale adds that the men sang Tiyo Soga's Lizalise idinga lakho, Thixo Nkosi yenyaniso(Fulfil thy wish, oh Lord, let all the nations receive thy salvation) as the ship went down.

Owned by the British and African Steam Navigation Company, the 4,200-ton Mendi was a passenger steamship that had been built in 1905, and requisitioned by the Royal Navy in 1916 as a troopship.

It had set sail from Cape Town on January 16 carrying 823 men of the 5th Battalion the South African Native Labour Contingent. The men came from all over Southern Africa, mostly South Africa: among them were 287 from the Transvaal, 139 from the Eastern Cape, 87 from Natal, 27 from the Northern Cape, 26 from the Orange Free State, 26 from Basutoland , eight from Bechuanaland , five from the Cape, one from Rhodesia and one from South West Africa. The officers and noncommissioned officer with them were white South Africans.

When the ship called at Lagos in Nigeria, the troops were fascinated by their first experience of a West African country. For many it was to be their last sight of Africa.

After calling at Plymouth in Devon, the Mendi sailed into the English Channel headed for Le Havre in northern France where the men were to serve in World War 1. In the dark and thick fog in the early morning of February 21, the ship was accidentally rammed by the Darro, a much larger cargo ship setting out for Argentina.

The Mendi sank 25 minutes later, just 10 nautical miles south of StCatherine's Point on the Isle of Wight, and lies there to this day, designated as a protected war grave by the UK defence ministry in 2009.

Some men were killed in the collision, some jumped into the sea where they drowned (most could not swim), died of hypothermia or were picked up by rescue lifeboats from another ship. Others were trapped below deck. The most heroic stayed on deck and sank with the Mendi.

When news of the tragedy reached home, the (white) parliament of the Union of South Africa stood for a minute's silence and prime minister Louis Botha paid tribute to the men. They were, however, never given posthumous medals, and many of their families were not informed of their fate until much later, if ever.

block_quotes_start The captain of the Darro, HW Stump, was responsible for the collision. Sailing at dangerously high speed in thick fog, he did not sound the usual fog signals to alert other ships block_quotes_end

The survivors were hospitalised, and went on to serve as support staff for fighting soldiers in France.

They were among the almost 21,000 black South Africans who were recruited at the request of the British government to alleviate the labour shortage on the Western Front, and who served in France between 1916 and 1918. About 35,000 South Africans had already served as labourers in the South West African campaign and 18,000 in the East African campaign.

The motives of the men who joined up were mixed, ranging from joblessness after the passing of the Native Land Act in 1913 to patriotism. Many hoped that their contribution to the war effort would earn them kudos with the British government, which would reward them with greater freedom and rights when they returned home.

The South African government had insisted that the men sent to Europe could not bear arms as the equals of white soldiers, and they were forbidden to fraternise with European people in the towns near which they were stationed in closed compounds. Their conditions were much like those of prisoners of war, and different from the contingents from other countries.

It was feared that if black South Africans were allowed uninhibited contact with Europeans it would undermine white supremacy in South Africa with ideas of equality.

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The compounds were fenced with barbed wire and guarded, and the men not allowed to leave unless accompanied by an officer or a white NCO. Even then they were not allowed into places serving alcohol, or to enter shops unless with a white person. They were not allowed to go into the houses of local people at all.

Many white officers of the South African Native Labour Contingent were former mine compound managers and officials from the Department of Native Affairs, as they were regarded as being familiar with working with black people. (Discontent with conditions in the camps, compared to those housing other nationals, eventually forced their closure and the end of the South African Native Labour Contingent.)

Along with labourers recruited in other countries including China, Japan, India, Egypt and Canada, the men were used to unload ships at Le Havre, Rouen and Dieppe, fell timber in the forests of France, work on roads and railway lines and act as porters.

As they were unarmed, many felt they were unfairly exposed to danger and even targeted by the Germans. In all, 333 of them died during the war, excluding the men on the Mendi. Most are buried at the British military cemetery at Arques-la-Bataille.

Later in 1917 an inquest into the sinking of the Mendi was held in London and found that the captain of the Darro, HW Stump, was responsible for the collision. Sailing at dangerously high speed in thick fog, he did not sound the usual fog signals to alert other ships. Most controversially, he did not stop to save any survivors from the sea.

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The Mendi has never been forgotten in South Africa. In 1928 the International African Ministers Association decided to observe February 21 as Mendi Day "in remembrance of the deeds of valour and sacrifice of the men of their race who went to serve their King and Country, hoping and believing that in the distribution of the spoils of war their compatriots and relatives may share in the blessing of peace and the opportunities guaranteed by the successful arms of the Allies".

A Mendi memorial committee subsequently organised annual commemorations, and in February 1933 every town in the Union commemorated all the war dead in all the theatres of World War 1.

A Mendi memorial scholarship fund was set up in the same year to assist African children to obtain higher education in the Union of South Africa and abroad by means of scholarships and bursaries.

It folded in 1950 but was reconstituted in 1973 after efforts by the Soweto and Johannesburg branches of the South African Legion. It still grants bursaries.

Mendi Day was never an official public holiday, and under National Party rule the sinking was commemorated less.

In the late '80s the same government moved to revive memories of the Mendi, and the democratic government has done much more since 1995.

The SS Mendi and the men who died with her live again in South Africa's psyche. Perhaps they never left it.