Just as dogs have been of great help in conflicts on the battlefield, cats have played a major role on many ships.
The so-called ship or boat cats as part of the crew.
From the ancient Egyptians, who made use of cats to catch birds along the banks of the Nile.
Later the most common use would come aboard commercial ships in order to combat rodents.
Rats and mice on board a ship can cause damage of all kinds: to the ship's own technology, to food, economic damage to merchandise, sources of disease.
Therefore, it is thought that precisely this activity was one of the reasons for the spread of cats throughout the world, reaching practically every corner of the planet, or at least as far as the shipping trade routes.
In addition, it must be added that throughout history the animal itself has been considered a god in different cultures, a reputation that was accompanied by deity-like abilities, magical animals that were believed to be able to keep boats protected from bad weather. .
So the concept was passed from culture to culture, from century to century, as a common feature.
First and for trade, but later in the exploration of man and finally also in war conflicts, inside warships.
The natural ability of cats to adapt to a new environment made them unique for this type of service on ships.
In those long periods at sea, cats also offered companionship and a sense of home or even camaraderie among sailors, especially in extended times of war.
And although there has been a small redoubt of large ship cats for which history has saved a special place.
Of all of them stands out the legend of Oscar the cat.
It would all start in World War II.
Oscar was not Oscar at first, he was simply a black and white cat who began his "career" as a ship's feline in the Nazi regime's fleet, the Kriegsmarine (Navy in German).
We are before the army of the III Reich between 1935 and 1945.
These ships were not only part of the Second World War, they also participated in the Spanish Civil War and would have Hitler as commander in chief, who exercised his authority through the Oberkommando der Marine (High Command of the Navy).
In Oscar's case, his adventure would begin on the Bismarck, one of the two Bismarck-class battleships of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine).
An immensity that together with its twin Tirpitz was the largest battleship ever built by the Nazi army.
The battleship was launched on February 14, 1939 with Oscar inside.
It measured 241 meters in length and weighed 41,700 tons.
Oscar's owner was part of the navy on the battleship, which is why he included the feline so it could help with rodent control.
Bismarck only saw service for eight months, taking part in a single offensive operation in May 1941.
Obviously the cat did not know where he was getting into, but he was inside the ship that would enter fully into what is known as the Battle of the Denmark Strait, a conflict on the high seas where the battleship sank the pride of the British Royal Navy, the battlecruiser HMS Hood and severely damaged the battleship HMS Prince of Wales.
This battle also caused serious damage to the ship, mainly due to the impact of three projectiles, which caused a significant loss of fuel in a damaged tank.
Two days later and after an intense search by the British, the Bismarck was attacked by torpedo bombers that destroyed the rudders, rendering the ship unmanageable.
The black and white cat had belonged to an unknown member of the crew of the German battleship Bismarck.
He was aboard the ship on May 18, 1941 when it sailed to take part in Operation Rheinübung, its first and only mission.
Battleship Bismarck.
The Bismarck was sunk after a fierce sea battle on May 27, from which only 118 members of her crew of more than 2,200 men had survived. Hours later, Oskar was found floating on a board floating in the water and picked up: the only survivor (along with 114 others) to be rescued by the British destroyer HMS Cossack.
Not knowing what his name would be on the Bismarck, the crew of HMS Cossack named their new pet "Sam".
The cat served aboard HMS Cossack in the following months as the ship carried out convoy escort duties in the Mediterranean and in the North Atlantic.
On October 24, 1941, the Cossack was escorting a convoy from Gibraltar to the United Kingdom when it was severely damaged by a torpedo fired by the German submarine U-563.
The crew was transferred to the destroyer HMS Legion, and an attempt was made to tow Cossack back to Gibraltar, but worsening weather conditions made the task impossible and she had to be abandoned.
On October 27, the Cossack sank west of Gibraltar.
The initial explosion had blown off a third of the ship's forward section and caused 159 crew casualties, but Oscar had survived this too and was washed ashore on the Gibraltar coast.
Perhaps because the situation was familiar to him, perhaps fortune once again, the fact is that Oscar once again ends up clinging to a piece of the floating destroyer.
In this case nobody rescues him, the tide carries Oscar to the shores of Gibraltar.
Once on land, the Englishmen who were part of the battleship realize that it is indeed Oscar, they do not believe that it is the same cat that was rescued from the sinking of the German ship and now from the Allied ship itself.
HMS Cossack.
It is at this time in history that the British named this war hero “Unsinkable Sam”.
Nicknamed "Unsinkable Sam" (Unsinkable Sam), the cat was transferred to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal that had coincidentally participated in the destruction of Bismarck.
Sam would find no more luck there, and when he was returning from Malta on November 14, 1941, this ship too was torpedoed, this time by U-81.
There were also attempts to tow the Ark Royal to Gibraltar, but an unstoppable leak made the task useless.
The aircraft carrier capsized and sank 30 miles from Gibraltar.
The slowness with which the ship sank made it possible to save all but one of the crew.
The survivors, including Sam, who had been found clinging to a boat's plank, and described as "angry but unharmed", were transferred to HMS Lightning and the same HMS Legion that Cossack's crew had rescued.
HMS Ark Royal.
The Legion would in turn be sunk in 1942 and the Lightning in 1943.
The loss of the Ark Royal justified the end of Sam's naval career and he was transferred first to the Governor's offices in Gibraltar and then returned to the UK, where he spent the rest of the war in a seaman's house in Belfast.
Sam died in 1955.
A portrait of Sam ("Oscar, the Bismarck's Cat") by artist Georgina Shaw-Baker is in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
