SS Mendi:

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SS Mendi: Theresa May to return WW1 shipwreck's bell to South Africa.

A World War One relic linked to one of the worst maritime disasters in English waters is to be given to South Africa by Theresa May.

The SS Mendi sank off the Isle of Wight in 1917 killing more than 600 black South Africans en route to the Western Front to support British troops.


The vessel was rammed by a British merchant ship in thick pre-dawn fog.


The prime minister will hand it to President Cyril Ramaphosa in Cape Town on Tuesday.


The ship's bell was given to BBC reporter Steve Humphrey in 2017 in a plastic bag at Swanage Pier, Dorset, after an anonymous phone call.

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THE bell from the SS Mendi, which claimed the lives of more than 600 South Africans when it sank off the Isle of Wight during the First World War, has been returned to the South African people.



Prime Minister Theresa May today (Tuesday) visited Cape Town to present the Mendi bell to President Cyril Ramaphosa, more than a century after the ship sank on February 21, 1917.



Originally salvaged from the wreck in the 1980s, the bell was given to the BBC's Steve Humphrey just last year. He handed it over to the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA).



For more than a year it has been on display in the Sea City Museum in Southampton while a permanent home was found.





The MCA's receiver of wreck, Alison Kentuck, said: "In these cases I have to consider the merits of each application to have the bell. But in the end, because this bell is such a poignant part of South Africa’s history, it seemed only right to return it.

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