Bismarck's cat
The Bismarck's cat is said to have survived the sinking of three ships. In the German-speaking world that is ship's cat , especially under the name Oscar known in English it is also Unsinkable Sam ( Engl. Called "Unsinkable Sam").
Legend
The black and white spotted tomcat (black with white chest and paws) is said to have been on board the battleship Bismarck when it first sank the Hood and sank on May 27, 1941 after being chased by the British fleet.
In addition to the 115 survivors of almost 2100 crew members, legend has it that the Bismarck's ship's cat "Oscar" was also saved, although only the cat's British name has been passed down; the name of the cat on board the Bismarck is unknown. The British destroyer HMS Cossack found no crew members, only the black cat drifting on a board. Oscar then became the ship's cat of the destroyer , who, however, was torpedoed and badly damaged by the German submarine U 563 on October 24, 1941 , killing 159 sailors. All attempts to save the destroyer failed. The HMS Cossack had to be abandoned on October 26th and sank. Oscar survived and was taken to Gibraltar .
There he found his next stop on the well to the sinking of the Bismarck involved aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal . Attacked and repaired several times in the past, the HMS Ark Royal was considered a lucky ship until she was torpedoed by the German submarine U 81 on November 13, 1941 with Oscar on board when returning from a mission near Malta and on November 14 sank about 30 nautical miles off Gibraltar.
Oscar was rescued, "only" one sailor had lost his life, but this time the cat, now suspected of being a bad luck charm, was no longer allowed to serve on a ship for the Royal Navy. He then stayed in the office of the port master of Gibraltar. He then lived in a seaman's home in Belfast until 1955 .
A portrait of the cat made by Georgina Shaw-Baker ("Oscar, the Bismarck's Cat") is in the possession of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich , the painting has been published in specialist literature in black and white.
Web links
- [1] - Article at einestages (Spiegel)
- Cats in wartime - Bismarck - Article on purr-n-fur.org.uk
- Only one survived the Bismarck and Ark Royal articles on WELT Geschichte
Individual evidence
- ↑ Janusz Piekałkiewicz : Sea War 1939-1945 , Munich 1980, p. 142.
- ↑ a b c d Philippe Caresse, Le Bismarck , Outreau 2004, p. 133.
- ↑ Janusz Piekałkiewicz: Sea War 1939–1945 , Munich 1980, p. 170.
- ↑ Janusz Piekałkiewicz: Sea War 1939-1945 , Munich 1980, p. 172f. Piekałkiewicz gives unspecified Royal Navy files as sources for the stay in the seaman's home.
- ^ List of items lent to other museums by the Imperial War Museum London, page 11/12; Unsinkable Sam to National Maritime Museum - ( Memento of the original from September 29, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
