SS Mendi

‘Be quiet and calm, my countrymen, for what is taking place is exactly 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, Basutos, we 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’. These words are ascribed to Reverend Isaac Wauchope Dyobha, and are believed to have been used to address members of the South African Native Labour Corps as they stood upon the listing deck of the sinking troopship, ss Mendi on 21st February 1917. The sinking of the Mendi resulted in the loss of 649 lives, the majority of them non-combatant black labourers from South Africa, en route to the Western Front in France. The loss of the Mendi soon drifted into historical obscurity, and for much of the 90 years since the event, it has been a story which with few exceptions has been largely forgotten in both the United Kingdom and South Africa. In the year of the 90th anniversary of the loss of the Mendi, English Heritage has commissioned Wessex Archaeology to produce a desk-based assessment of the state of knowledge relating to this event.