Unsinkable Sam
- Legendary Cat Who Survived Three World War II Shipwrecks -
Unsinkable Sam was either incredibly lucky or an omen of death. For five years, the black and white cat escorted U.S. Navy men bound for combat in the Atlantic during World War II. According to legend, while at sea, Unsinkable Sam managed to escape three different attacks totally unscathed.
The Tale Of Unsinkable Sam Begins Aboard A Nazi Battleship
The Kriegsmarine, or the Nazis’ Navy, launched the battleship Bismarck in 1939, mere months before the Reich invaded Poland and kicked off World War II. By 1941, the ship had reached the northern part of the Atlantic Ocean in an attempt to sabotage the naval envoys carrying supplies between Canada and the U.K.
Aboard the Bismarck was a crew of about 2,200 members, and it is said that among them was Unsinkable Sam, a black-and-white-colored cat.
The Bismarck was destroyed following an intense three-day battle against the British Royal Navy on May 27, 1941. As it sunk, only 114 of the ship’s passengers survived — one of them Unsinkable Sam.
As the legend goes, another British battleship, the HMS Cossack, began attempting to rescue survivors of the sunken Bismarck in the open sea. Crew members spotted the lucky cat as it was seeking refuge on a floating plank. The feline then was brought aboard Cossack and given the name Oscar, which is also sometimes spelled Oskar because of his German origins.
But several months later, Cossack suffered a disaster of its own when it was sunk by a German torpedo. But yet again, Oscar was rescued by crew of the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. It was while aboard this ship that Oscar is said to have received his infamous nickname, “Unsinkable Sam”
And as fate would have it, that nickname would once again prove true, when on Nov. 14, 1941, about a month after he was reportedly rescued, Ark Royal was torpedoed. The ship was decimated, but Unsinkable Sam went unscathed. He was allegedly rescued for a third by the HMS Legion, another ship under the British Royal Navy’s fleet.
Perhaps Unsinkable Sam truly had nine lives to spare.
So, whatever happened to Unsinkable Sam after surviving his third shipwreck? According to Britain’s Royal Museums Greenwich, the cat retired to land, where he was placed in the offices of the Governor of Gibraltar. He was later adopted by a seaman who lived in Belfast, and that is where he died in 1955.
But like most apocryphal tales, the story of the cat who repeatedly escaped death at sea is full of gaps. For one, there are no records of a cat having been brought aboard the Bismarck, at least according to the ship’s survivors.
There’s also the issue of Oscar’s supposed appearance. There are two different portraits that are suspected to be of Oscar, both showing him as a black-and-white tuxedo cat. One is a pastel drawing made by an unknown artist, in which he is sitting on a piece of floating wood.
Nice story and.. Why not!
=)
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