When good men do nothing to help
On February 21, 1917, the troop carrier SS Mendi sank in the English Channel in the greatest maritime disaster involving South African lives. A total of 616 South African soldiers perished – 607 of them black – but the man responsible for their deaths, th
THE five-day Board of Trade court of inquiry into the loss of the Mendi was held in Caxton Hall in London in late July and early August 1917. Because of the sensitivity of the tragedy, it had been hoped to appoint a magistrate to conduct the investigation who was experienced in conducting Board of Trade inquiries. With none available, presiding magistrate JG Hay Halkett was assisted by three captains and commanders in the Royal Navy and Royal Naval Reserve.
Formal inquiries of this type in wartime were unusual and reflected British concern to demonstrate to the South African government that the disaster was being properly investigated. Both the Board of Trade and the South African government were represented. News of the disaster was not covered up and there was sufficient public interest for each day’s evidence to be covered in the national newspapers.
The court of inquiry heard from 18 witnesses, principally the two captains and other members of their crews. It proved difficult to secure the presence of the South African Native Labour Contingent (SANLC) and naval officers because of wartime demands, therefore their evidence was given by affidavit or report. The inquiry also heard from expert witnesses, and naval architect George Brace gave evidence that the ship would probably not have sunk had the flooding been confined to hold 1.
There does not appear to have been any attempt to hear from the black members of the SANLC.
As well as establishing the basic facts, the court was concerned to establish what caused the loss of life and damage. Appreciating the great sensitivity of this issue, considerable effort had and was being made by the Board of Trade Maritime Department to reassure both the court and the South African government that the Mendi had been carrying sufficient lifesaving equipment. While it was admitted in correspondence with the admiralty and the South Africans that regulations would have required the ship to carry more lifeboats and fewer life rafts had it sailed from a British port, in the event, the court declared itself satisfied with the equipment that had been provided.
It blamed the loss of life not on a lack of boats but on the rapid listing of the ship and on the abnormal coldness of the water, which it said made life rafts less effective than would otherwise have been the case.
The court also sought to establish whether either captain was at fault and it had the power to suspend or cancel their certificates if it believed that they were to blame. After hearing the evidence, they exonerated Yardley. However, despite the fact that the other seafarers present proved reluctant to blame him, the court found against (Captain Henry) Stump. They held that the Darro had been going too fast and was not navigated “with proper and seamanlike care”.
They found that he breached his responsibilities under British law to render assistance to the Mendi and that he had caused loss of life and damage to both ships. In its judgment, the court stated that his inaction was inexcusable.
It is not hard to sense a strong undercurrent of suppressed outrage on the part of those examining Stump and his officers. Nevertheless, the court decided that Stump’s punishment should be the suspension of his master’s certificate for the period of only 12 months, rather than its cancellation. Although the punishment meted out does appear remarkably light given the scale of the loss of life, it was wartime and Britain was in the middle of an increasingly desperate fight to keep its maritime supply lines open. Highly experienced merchant ship captains were in short supply.
Henry Winchester Stump was born in London in 1866, the son of an artificial-limb maker and the grandson of a noted miniature painter. Rather than following in his father’s footsteps, Stump went to sea. Having passed his exams and been awarded his Certificate of Competency as Master of a Foreign-Going Ship in October 1896 at the age of 30, he was employed between 1896 and 1905 as third, second and finally first mate, before commanding his first ship as master in 1906. Stump resumed command in 1919 after his suspension and commanded a further 14 vessels before his retirement in 1931.
The punishment meted out to Stump for his role in the loss of the Mendi seems to have been regarded by many as too lenient. A faction within the Board of Trade certainly thought so, and a barrister’s opinion was sought as to whether he could be subject to a successful criminal prosecution for his failure to render assistance. In the event, Eminent Counsel Sir Reginald Ackland thought not and the matter was reluctantly dropped.
Captain AH Young, in a note handwritten on official minutes, said that he considered what Stump had done to be “one of the gravest instances on record” of a failure to assist. He went on to express the opinion that he was unfit for command and angrily wrote that he “should forever be precluded from the command of a Brit[ish] ship. Such a man is a standing menace to seafarers”. But was Young right to think this of Stump? Was he really a menace?
As a master, Stump was no stranger to serious accidents. On 23 August 1916, when in command of the Darro’s sister vessel, the Drina, and outbound from Liverpool to Lisbon with coal and general cargo, he collided with a topsail schooner off Carnarvon Lighthouse. That collision also occurred at night and in dense fog. Although he was not new to the Darro and had commanded it in 1916, the day before the Mendi disaster occurred, Stump struck the quay wall in Le Havre while manoeuvring. In 1921, he also collided with and sank a trawler while in command of the Cisneros. It is unknown whether, or to what extent, Stump was to blame for any of these collisions and there is no record of proceedings being taken against him after any of them.
At the inquiry, Stump was questioned at length about why he had driven his ship at full speed through the fog and why he had not used sound signals as required by law. He came across as evasive and contradicted himself. He told the court that he was worried about alerting enemy submarines by blowing his whistle and that he had received instructions about maintaining speed and silence. However, he was unable to provide any details about who had given him these instructions, and the court clearly did not believe him.
He also said that he had been told by the French authorities to make sure that he had reached the English coast by daylight and that this justified his speed and his silence.
The court disagreed. Furthermore, he said that he had not expected a troopship to be there, an excuse that appears to have been regarded as particularly unconvincing, given the very large numbers of vessels moving along and across the Channel daily.
With regard to why he had not taken any steps to render assistance, Stump offered up a range of excuses that were either weak or were contradicted by others, including men from his own crew.
He had been steaming at full speed, so must have known that the collision was likely to have caused catastrophic damage to the vessel he had run into. He told the court that he thought that his own vessel was in danger, but it was clear that he knew, or should have known very quickly, that it was not. It was not therefore necessary to hold his own boats back for emergency use (he had 24 at his disposal), and his claim that to have used them in the fog would have put them at risk was not treated seriously.
He claimed not to have enough men to man both the boats and the ship, yet his crew numbered 163. His claims that he could not hear, or that he had misunderstood, the cries of the men in the water were contradicted by witnesses from his own crew, who told the court that such cries could be heard for several hours. The court noted that even when two boat loads and a raft of survivors had come alongside, he made no enquiries and took no action.
There is little doubt that Stump had little awareness or concern for the risk his speed posed to vessels like the Mendi, but it is possible to find some reason behind the recklessness. The threat of U-boats was very real, and it is possible that this drove him to run what he thought, perhaps with some degree of justification, was a small risk of actually running into another ship. However, if he feared that threat so much, it is difficult to understand why he kept his ship at the scene of the disaster for several hours.
With regard to his failure to render assistance, this remains unexplained and perhaps unexplainable. It is hard to find any credible mitigation. And yet Stump received a character reference from his employers and continued to work as a master when his suspension was over. His crew and others who gave evidence do not appear to have expressed any critical opinions about him in their evidence, although it is true that it would have taken a brave seaman to directly criticise an experienced captain.