Mrs. Chippy

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Mrs. Chippy (1914)
Wolf Howard: Mrs. Chippy

Mrs. Chippy († October 30, 1915 on the pack ice of the Weddell Sea , Antarctica ) was the ship's cat of the Endurance on Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition .

Life

The tabby house cat had been brought on board by Harry McNish , the ship's carpenter called "Chippy," and was named before it was discovered to be a male. Mrs. Chippy is described as a handsome, affectionate, and good-natured cat. He proved to be a good mouse and rat catcher and enjoyed general popularity among the crew. The men amused the way Mrs. Chippy apparently made fun of strutting across the roofs of the kennels , always just out of reach of the raging dogs. The cat's climbing skills also earned him respect, even in the roughest seas. At the beginning of the voyage, on September 13, 1914, Mrs. Chippy jumped through a porthole and fell into the sea. The officer on watch Huberht Hudson (1886–1942) turned the ship and had the cat brought back on board with the safety net of the biologist Robert Clark (1882–1950).

When the Endurance , which had already been enclosed by the pack ice in January 1915 , could no longer withstand the pressure and sank at the end of October, Shackleton ordered all animals to be of no concrete use - three puppies, the sled dog Sirius, who couldn't be harnessed like the others , and Mrs. Chippy - to shoot. In his book South , he later quoted his diary that under the new circumstances one could not have afforded to feed “wimps”. The captain of the Endurance Frank Worsley defended Shackleton's decision in 1931, pointing out that the cat would have been eaten by the dogs without the protection of the ship. In the case of Mrs. Chippy and the pups, it was up to Second Officer Thomas Crean to carry out the sentence.

aftermath

Bronze sculpture Mrs. Chippy on McNish's grave (2010)

Harry McNish never forgave the expedition leader. His resentment led to growing tension between the two men, which one day culminated in McNish's attempt to overtly disobey him. Although as a carpenter he undoubtedly played an important role in the successful rescue of the entire crew of the Endurance , he was one of the few who were not awarded the polar medal for "disloyalty". He died in Wellington , New Zealand in 1930 and was buried in the Karori cemetery there. It was not until 1959 that the New Zealand Antarctic Society donated a tombstone to the veteran . The company commissioned the sculptor Chris Elliott to create a life-size bronze sculpture of Mrs. Chippy in 2004, which has adorned McNish's grave ever since.

In 1997, the American journalist Caroline Alexander (* 1956) published a fictional diary of Mrs. Chippys under the title Mrs. Chippy's last expedition . The book describes life on board the Endurance, which was drifting with the pack ice, from January 15 to October 29, 1915. A painting by stuccoist Wolf Howard (* 1968) depicts Mrs. Chippy immediately before she was shot. In the background you can see how the men pull an open boat away from the frozen ship. On February 15, 2011, the UK Overseas Territory Post of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands issued a set of stamps on pets related to the area. The motif of the stamp with a face value of £ 1.15 is the photograph taken by Frank Hurley of Mrs. Chippy on the shoulder of Perce Blackborow (1894–1949).

literature

  • Caroline Alexander: Mrs. Chippy's last expedition to Antarctica. The previously undiscovered diary of Shackleton's ship's cat . Scherz, Bern / Munich / Vienna 1999, ISBN 978-3-502-10018-8 (English: Mrs. Chippy's Last Expedition . New York 1997. Translated by Anne Büchel).

Web links

Commons : Mrs. Chippy  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Detail from the only photo of the cat, taken by Frank Hurley
  2. ↑ Shane Murphy: Shackleton's photographer. The standard edition . 2001, ISBN 0-9703148-2-5 , pp. 117 f . ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ Shane Murphy: Shackleton's photographer. The standard edition . 2001, ISBN 0-9703148-2-5 , pp. 38 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  4. ↑ Caroline Alexander: Mrs. Chippy, RIP . In: The New York Times , November 21, 2004 (English)
  5. ^ Ernest Shackleton: South . The Macmillan Co., New York 1920, p. 81, Textarchiv - Internet Archive . “ This afternoon Sallie's three youngest pups, Sue's Sirius, and Mrs. Chippy, the carpenter's cat, have to be shot. We could not undertake the maintenance of weaklings under the new conditions. ”
  6. ^ Frank Worsley: Endurance. An Epic of Polar Adventure . Geoffrey Bles, London 1931, p. 46, Text Archive - Internet Archive . “ As a matter of fact the cat could have come along with us in splendid style had it not been that the dogs, now that she lacked the protection of the ship, would have eaten her. ”
  7. ^ Alfred Lansing: 635 days in the ice. You Shackleton Expedition . Goldmann-Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-442-30841-0 , p. 82.
  8. ↑ Kim Griggs: Antarctic hero 'reunited' with cat . BBC News on June 21, 2004 (English)
  9. ^ Project Mrs. Chippy on the website of the New Zealand Arctic Society (English); Retrieved November 29, 2014
  10. ↑ Pets: New Stamp Issue ( Memento from December 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) In: South Georgia Newsletter , February 2011 (English)