The bell from the doomed SS Mendi is on prominent - if temporary - display at Southampton’s prestigious SeaCity Museum, while research continues into establishing its legal owner.
The SS Mendi went down in the early hours of February 21, 1917, claiming the lives of 607 volunteers of the South African Native Labour Contingent, nine of their white officers and all 33 British crew members after being struck in thick mist by a larger vessel, the SS Darro, sailing at speed.
The bell, delivered anonymously to a BBC reporter in Swanage on the south coast of England last month, is presumed to have been recovered from the wreck site, 11 nautical miles (20km) south west of St Catherine’s Point on the Isle of Wight, in recent decades.
The wreck was positively identified in 1974 and was a popular dive site until 2009, when Britain’s Ministry of Defence designated the location a protected war grave, making it an offence to remove items.
In terms of Britain’s Merchant Shipping Act of 1995, anything taken from a wreck or found on the shore must be reported to the Receiver of Wreck, whose task is to establish its legal ownership.
South Africa’s historical and sentimental associations with the vessel, a cargo ship chartered by the British government during World War I and refitted as a troopship, will probably play a part in determining the bell’s final home.
In terms of British law, however, the first task is to determine who may legally claim ownership.
Britain’s Receiver of Wreck, Alison Kentuck, told Weekend Argus this week she had been in correspondence with the potential owner of the wreck with a view to establishing the legal status of the recovered bell.
“We have progressed our research but no conclusion has been reached as yet," she said.
“We have looked at the wording of the original charter party agreement for the SS Mendi to determine who was likely to be liable on the total loss of the vessel. We are hoping to locate further papers that are specific to the Mendi.”
Kentuck told Weekend Argus last month South Africa’s sentimental claim to the bell would be a factor in determining its final home.
“We are certainly aware of the resonance that this bell will have in South Africa and I have no doubt this will form part of the discussion on the bell’s long-term future,” she said.
In the meantime, the bell is on display in the entrance hall of the SeaCity Museum in Southampton.
It is understood the museum has plans for an evening lecture about it and the fate of the ship and its passengers and has included information on the Mendi in its schools education programme.
The Mendi tragedy, one of the worst maritime disasters in Britain in the 20th century, was South Africa’s second biggest loss in the war after the attrition of Delville Wood some months earlier, in 1916.
The 4229-ton SS Mendi was built at Glasgow in 1905 for the British and African Steam Navigation Company, which, by the outbreak of World War I, formed part of the Elder Dempster Line.
Until 1916 the Mendi was engaged exclusively in the Liverpool-West Africa trade.
The vessel was chartered by the Ministry of Transport in autumn 1916, being fitted out as a troopship in Lagos in October. It set sail for France from Cape Town in January 1917 and sank in the English Channel on the final leg of its journey, from Plymouth.
Among the dead were three Pondoland chiefs - Henry Bokleni, Dokoda Richard Ndamase and Mxonywa Bangani.
In the century since, the Mendi disaster has become a symbol of unrewarded black valour - none of South Africa’s black volunteers in the war received the British War Medal - and the depredations of 20th century history.
The Mendi deaths are memorialised at various sites in South Africa, Britain and Europe.
The ownership of the wreck was examined in a comprehensive 2007 Wessex Archaeology report on the Mendi, commissioned by English Heritage.
Wessex Archaeology said: “Neither the Mendi nor the Darro (which collided with the Mendi) were Royal Navy ships, although the Mendi was on UK government War Service at the time of its loss.
"But, as it sank as a result of a collision, it was a marine rather than a war loss. As such the War Risk Office would not have been involved in the subsequent insurance claim and the Department for Transport is not therefore the owner of the wreck.
“As a marine loss, the Mendi would almost certainly have been the subject of an insurance claim and the insurers would normally have become the owners of the wreck.
"However enquiries of the relevant Elder Dempster records indicate that they have not survived and enquiries of Lloyds have failed to identify the insurers concerned. Wessex Archaeology is also aware that the Salvage Association has been unable to locate the current owners.”
Ocean Transport and Trading, the successors to Elder Dempster, indicated that “they were unable to confirm that they were the owners”.