South Africa's fourth Meko A200 SAN Valour-class corvette will be named the SAS Mendi, after the troopship that sank during World War One, taking 607 of the 802 South African Native Labour Corps troops aboard to a watery grave.

The events of February 21, 1917 are remembered at a number of memorials in South Africa, Britain and France and in the name of one of the SA Navy's current Warrior class fast attack craft, the SAS Isaac Dyobha, arguably one of the few warships ever to be named after a cleric.

At 5am that day, the Mendi was struck and cut almost in half by another ship, the SS Darro, while crossing the English Channel from Britain to France.

The South African Legion, a veteran's organisation, records that oral tradition records that the men met their fate with great dignity.

It is recorded that Reverend Dyobha, to calm the panic and quieten the men in their hour of death, caught their attention by raising his arms aloft and crying out in a loud voice "Be quiet and calm, my countrymen. What is happening now is what you came to do ... you are going to die, but that is what you came to do. Brothers, we are drilling the death drill. I, a Xhosa, say you are my brothers ... Swazis, Pondos, Basotho ... so let us die like brothers. We are the sons of Africa. Raise your war-cries, brothers, for though they made us leave our assegais in the kraal, our voices are left with our bodies."

The navy has previously said the ships would be named after some of the more famous battles in South African history.

The symbolism, however, was not in the battles themselves, or who the victors were, but the extreme valour shown by those involved.

The lead ship in the class was named Amatola for the area of a famous Xhosa chief, Sandile, who hounded the British during a series of 19th century frontier wars in what is now the Eastern Cape province.

The second ship was named Isandlwana for Zulu King Cetswayo's successful destruction of a British supply depot near the hill of that name.

The third ship remembers the 1900 Battle of Spioenkop, arguably the single bloodiest battle of the South African War. The progression suggested a name from World War I.

During that conflict South Africans, white and black, fought with distinction in south-west and east Africa, in France, most famously Delville Wood in July 1916, in Palestine, most notably the Cape Corps at Square Hill, in September 1918, and on the high seas.

While the navy has not yet announced the name of the Mendi, her name is recorded in the government's "South Africa Yearbook 2003," published in October 2002.

She is expected to be christened and launched early in 2004.

Her elder sister is scheduled to arrive at Simon's Town, their future home port, in November 2003.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.