CHARMAIN NAIDOO: Out on the charcoal sea with the heroes of the SS Mendi
'They told how they clung to bobbing bits of wood from the breaking up Mendi until they were plucked from the sea by rescue ships'
The day broke wet on that February morning on the Isle of Wight, the never-let-up rain of deep northern winter. And cold. Bitter bone-aching cold. The old men shivered in their great coats, bought for them in London, apparently, because they’d arrived from the heat of a late South African summer dressed in shiny shabby suits, but no winter coats. I can’t remember their names, only that they were part of the contingent of black South Africans who signed up to fight in World War One; and that they were the last of the handful of men who survived the sinking of the SS Mendi, the ship that was taking them to the battlefields of France. It was the 75th anniversary of the tragedy, one of the 20th century’s worst maritime disasters in UK waters, and the men were here on the Isle of Wight to visit the spot where the SS Mendi sank, and to commemorate their fallen comrades. My dear friend Jeremy Brooks and I (both foreign correspondents working out of London – me for the Sunday Times; he for ...
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