Well I do. "Civilisation might be ending but the dog's okay... hooray, pass the popcorn." Annoys me no end. And yet...
It's an impressive story of survival when it happens for real (and I want to preface this tale by saying I don't want to trivialise the fact that bloody events surround it, it's just a remarkable story).
It begins - as far as we know - in the port of Gdynia in Poland, then a German naval base which the Germans called Gotenhafen. From there the much feared German battleship Bismarck left port on March 18th 1941, accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.
The Bismarck was sunk in the mid Atlantic after a frantic mobilisation and much loss by the Royal Navy on March 27th. Only 115 men out of over 2000 survived the sinking.
Heading back to base, the British destroyer HMS Cossack picked up one more survivor - a black and white cat.
It had belonged to an unknown member of the Bismarck's crew and was found clinging to a bit of debris. The Cossack's crew named him "Oscar" and made him the ship's mascot.
HMS Cossack served as a convoy escort in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea, and Oscar remained aboard. Presumably he looked for mice and played with the crew. On October 24th 1941 the German submarine U-563 torpedoed HMS Cossack. The hit caused a massive explosion in the forward section which killed 159 of the crew. Oscar was rescued with the crew who were transfered to HMS Legion, and taken to the British base at Gibraltar.By now this cat had a reputation, and started to be known as Unsinkable Sam.
The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal had been a key vessel in the hunt for the Bismarck, and it became Unsinkable Sam's new home. It is my guess that Unsinkable Sam would rather have remained at Gibraltar.
On November 14th 1941 the Ark Royal was torpedoed by another German sub, U-81, on the way back from Malta. The sinking was slow and nearly all the crew survived, and... found floating on a plank in the middle of the sea... was one supremely pissed-off cat.
Unsinkable Sam was described as "angry but quite unharmed".
Sam was transfered to HMS Lightening and then HMS Legion (again). Both were later sunk.
Someone took pity on this poor feline, who had presumably started life in Poland, had travelled the Baltic, North Sea, North Atlantic and the Mediterranean, been as far east as Malta, and had had three ships blown up under him and ended up floating in the sea twice, and he was sent to the office buildings of the Governor General of Gibraltar to do mouse-hunting work.
Sam survived the war and was sent to the United Kingdom, living out his days in a seaman's home in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He died in 1955.
For all we know... he might have just been picked up on a whim off a street in Poland by a German sailor all those years previously.
The portrait is a pastels painting of Unsinkable Sam, called "Oscar, the Bismarck’s Cat". It is at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich England.
Fascinating story. Perhaps there's something to the "9 lives of a cat."
ReplyDeleteI often wonder what animals think and if this guy was thinking, he was probably asking himself; "can't these morons keep their boats above water?"
Great story, Magpie. I'm a little surprised they didn't view Sam as a jinx. My cat may have some flying time in the future but no boats.
ReplyDeleteI sort of wonder if the damned thing didn't have a transmitter implanted in it.
ReplyDeleteBob, you're probably right.
ReplyDeleteexDLB, Yeah I thought that too, and in a more superstitious age he might have been thought of as the Bismarck’s revenge. But I think the chief imperative of men at sea during war is survival, and Oscar/Sam was a symbol of that.
Eagle, not in 1941, but shhh in case some military nerd gets ideas...