All is quiet aboard the British Blue Star liner, the Dunedin Star, on 29 November 1942. En route from Liverpool to Egypt via Cape Town, the ship strikes a submerged reef off the Skeleton Coast near the Kunene River mouth. A part of her keel is suddenly ripped open with water streaming into the engine room.
The thing is its wartime in Europe and the Dunedin Star isn’t just carrying civilian passengers but valuable Allied munitions and military supplies, too. There are 107 passengers aboard and now they’re stranded on the most hostile shoreline on Earth.
DUNEDIN STAR SKELETON COAST RESCUE
Crew on the Dunedin Star get an SOS out, and Walvis Bay answers. The survivors who reach the beach, 63 people, three babies and a pregnant woman, now find a deadly desert on one side and a freezing, foggy Atlantic Ocean on the other, with scorching days in between. The other 44 stay aboard.
Help comes first by water. The South African tug Sir Charles Elliott and converted minesweeper Nerine steam north from Walvis Bay. The heavy surf and strong currents keep them from the beach and attempts to float supply rafts ashore failed. Then the tug herself runs aground on 3 December. Two of the crew die.
Next, a South African Air Force Ventura bomber flies from Cape Town to drop supplies. Most of what it drops is destroyed and lost on impact. The crew then makes a bold call to land and evacuate the stranded women and children. But the plane crash-lands into the desert’s salty crust and the rescuers needed rescuing, too.
SEA, AIR AND LAND RESUCE
Meanwhile, a South African Police convoy led by Captain J.W.B. Smith has left Windhoek. Driving across endless Namib desert. Approximately 11 trucks struggle through the deadly dunes for days. The Dunedin Star rescue convoy eventually reaches survivors on the beach and begins to move them out.
All the survivors reach Windhoek on Christmas Eve, 26 days after the wreck. Not a single person aboard the Dunedin Star dies. However, the cost of the incredibly difficult rescue mission is one tug, one bomber, several army trucks and the lives of two tug crewmen.
In a wartime period defined by death and destruction, the Dunedin Star rescue stands out as a remarkable triumph of the human spirit over adversity. And the wreckage remains on the Skeleton Coast to this day …
But what do you think? Had you ever heard of the Dunedin Star rescue mission back in 1942? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below …