SS Mendi, an ocean liner turned troopship pressed into service during the First World War, is remembered not for the sinking itself but for the way in which her passengers and crew met their fate, leaving an enduring scar on South African history.

A modest passenger liner built for the West African trade, SS Mendi became the stage of one of the First World War’s deadliest maritime tragedies when she sank in 1917, carrying men who had volunteered for a war that would never truly recognise their sacrifice.

Built in 1905 by Alexander Stephen & Sons of Glasgow for the British & African Steam Navigation Company, she was managed by Elder Dempster Lines and plied the West African coast, connecting disparate colonies to London. At 4,222 gross tons, 370 feet in length and 46 feet abeam, she was a relatively small passenger and cargo ship compared with the grand transatlantic liners of the era, ferrying passengers, mail and goods along well-established colonial routes.

When war broke out in 1914, the British Admiralty requisitioned merchant ships for military use. SS Mendi was converted into a troop transport, stripped of her modest peacetime comforts and adapted for the grim business of carrying men to the Western Front.

In 1916, the Union of South Africa agreed to send men to support Britain’s war effort. Black South Africans, barred from combat service by the racist policies of the day, were recruited into the South African Native Labour Corps (SANLC). Their role was non-combatant: digging trenches, unloading ships, building roads and railways — essential, but largely unrecognised labour.

More than 20,000 men volunteered. For many, it was their first time leaving their villages; some saw it as a chance to prove loyalty to the Empire, others as an opportunity for wages or adventure. On January 16th, 1917, more than 800 of them boarded SS Mendi in Cape Town, bound for the war in Europe.

Disaster in the Channel

After a long voyage north, SS Mendi left Plymouth on February 20th, 1917 in convoy for Le Havre, carrying 802 SANLC members, 33 crew, and 17 military officers. In the early hours of February 21st, thick fog blanketed the English Channel, and at around 5am in the morning, south of the Isle of Wight, SS Mendi was rammed on her starboard side by the much larger mail steamer Darro.

The impact tore a massive hole in Mendi’s hull. Within 20 minutes, she would be swallowed by the frigid waters of the channel, but the SANLC men, many of whom could not swim, assembled on her decks with remarkable discipline. 

The oral histories of survivors tell of the Reverend Isaac Dyobha addressing the men in the ship’s final minutes: “Be quiet and calm, my countrymen, for 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. Zulus, Swazis, Pondos, Basotho — we die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our weapons at home, our voices are left with our bodies.”

Those words, part history, part legend, became immortalised as SS Mendi’s “death drill”. Survivors later recalled that, in those final minutes, the men of the SANLC stood together on the slanting deck, stamping their feet and chanting as though on parade. 

Many could not swim and knew the freezing waters of the English Channel offered little hope, but they faced death with remarkable composure. Some sang hymns, others called out to one another across the deck, their voices carrying above the hiss of steam and the groan of the ship’s bulkheads.

The contrast with the Darro was stark. The larger ship had steamed on into the fog after the collision, her master, Captain Henry Stump, making no effort to lower boats or search for survivors. 

The inquiry later noted that had he stopped, many hundreds might have been saved. Instead, the SANLC men slipped one by one into the black water, clinging to wreckage or praying as the Mendi disappeared beneath them, remembered only through the words and the discipline of their “death drill.”

Of the 802 SANLC members aboard, 607 died, along with 9 of the white officers and 33 crew. Only 267 men were saved. Captain Henry Stump of the Darro was later censured for the collission, and for failing to stop and assist survivors, though he was never formally punished.

The tragedy reverberated across South Africa. Communities mourned men who had left home with the promise of wages and honour, only to be lost in foreign waters. In official war commemorations, however, their sacrifice went largely unacknowledged for decades.

The sinking of SS Mendi came to symbolise both the contributions, and the marginalisation, of black South Africans in the First World War. For decades it was remembered quietly in rural communities, through oral tradition and personal mourning, but it was only after the fall of the Apartheid regime that SS Mendi became widely recognised as part of South Africa’s national story. 

Today, the tragedy is commemorated annually on February 21st as Armed Forces Day. The names of the dead are inscribed on memorials in France, Britain and South Africa, and the shipwreck site in the Channel is a protected war grave.

SS Mendi’s legacy

Although Mendi was no grand Cunarder, Canadian Pacific Empress, or legendary ghost ship like Waratah, her story endures because of the men she carried — men who, denied equality in life, faced death with courage and dignity. Today, the Mendi bell stands at the University of Cape Town, unveiled in 1995 by President Nelson Mandela.

More than a century later, their sacrifice resonates beyond maritime history, a reminder that the great wars were fought not only by soldiers in trenches, but also by labourers, sailors, and forgotten volunteers whose lives ended far from home, fighting for a future they would never see. Their courage in death has outlived the prejudice of their age.