£340
A SILVER SHIPPING COMPANY'S NAPKIN RING FOR S.S. MENDI
by Walker & Hall, hallmarked for Sheffield 1905, bearing the coloured enamel house flag of Elder Dempster’s British & African Steam Navigation Company, and engraved “Souvenir of voyage --- by S.S. Mendi”
S.S. Mendi, 4,320 tons, was built by Alexander Stephen & Sons of Glasgow in 1905 and operated for eleven years before being requisitioned as a troopship in 1916. At about 5.00 am, on 21st February 1917, whilst still dark and in thick fog, Mendi collided with the Royal Mail Line’s steamer Darro off St. Catherine’s Point, Isle of Wight, and sank in twenty minutes. On passage from Simonstown, South Africa, to Le Havre, via Plymouth, she was carrying an entire Bantu native labour battalion heading for the Western Front. A total complement of 823 persons were lost in what is now regarded as one of the worst passenger ship disasters of the Great War even though it has been almost totally forgotten outside of South Africa.
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