SS Mendi: the facts

WHILE it is much appreciated that both Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa and the Cape Times have marked the loss of the SS Mendi a century ago, minor corrections need to be made to the feature published on Tuesday.

Mendi (4 320 tons, Elder Dempster Lines) and Darro (11 000 tons, Royal Mail Steam Packet Co) were both British ships, not South African.

At the time of the collision, both ships were sailing under wartime conditions, which required them to be fully blacked out.

Remember, radar – that now invaluable aid to navigation – was an invention still decades in the future.

Darro was at full speed – in her case this was perhaps 12 knots (the Windsor Castle did over 26 knots!).

The published photograph is not of the SS Mendi – she was a passenger liner, whereas the pictured Altona Mendi is a cargo vessel.

The sinking occurred on February 20, 2016. On February 1, Germany had begun unrestricted submarine warfare on Allied shipping. Hence no lights were shown by either ship (Reference: Ships and South Africa, Marischal Murray, Oxford University Press).