At Ground Zero you will find a number of information plaques and a statue of a very famous dog.
Able Seaman Just Nuisance.
Just Nuisance was the only dog ever to be officially enlisted in the Royal Navy. He was a Great Dane who between 1939 and 1944 served at HMS Afrikander, a Royal Navy shore establishment in Simon's Town, South Africa. He died in 1944 at the age of seven years and was buried with full military honours.
You can find his grave site at 34° 11.876'S 18° 25.544'E
The S.S.MENDI Memorial
On January 16, 1917 the Mendi troopship sailed from Cape Town en route to La Havre in France carrying the last contingent of the SANLC comprising 805 black private, 5 white officers and 17 non-commissioned officers as well as 33 crewmembers.
On the morning of 21 February 1917, another ship, the SS Darro (10 0000 tons) travelling at full speed in fog and emitting no warning signals, rammed the SS Mendi (4 230 tons), which sank in 20 minutes. No steps were taken by the SS Darro to lower boats or rescue the survivors. She stood off and floated nearby while lifeboats from the SS Mendi's escorting destroyer, HMS Brisk, rowed among the survivors, trying to rescue them. There are many stories of bravery about the men's bravery as the ship went down. Six hundred and seven men were lost. A great loss of life in 1917.
This event is commemorated by monuments in South Africa, Britain, France and the Netherlands.
At ground zero you will find out about the audacious escape of the imperial Russian sloop DIANA and other Navy ships that have gone down in south African history.
The Queen Victoria Memorial.
Now down to the logging tasks to be able to log this cache you will need answer the following questions.
1: At Ground Zero you need to find the “IN MEMORAIAM” plaque. It is in front of the S.S.MENDI Memorial close to statue of Able Seaman Just Nuisance.
On the plaque find the following people and provide their surname and what country they are from.
A: Robert K
B: Paul
C: Thomas
2: Take a photo of yourself (a face is not required in the photo) with Able Seaman Just Nuisance or your GPSr and post it with your log. You can get creative with your photos.
3: Find the audacious escape of the imperial Russian sloop DIANA plaque and count the number of complete chain links on the chain in the front of the wooden plinth.
4: Find North on the compass rose at GZ and take a picture of it and your GPSr pointing north. (this is just for fun and not needed to log your find.) But if you do please post it with your log.
All the Information is found with in a 6 meter radius of the listed Ground zero.
Please remember to send your answers to the questions , Logs with out answers will be removed.
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between August 24, 2017 and August 24, 2018. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards on the Geocaching Blog.
[ Please remember to send your answers to the questions , Logs with out answers will be removed. You can send your answers via the message center or email ]