On May 27th, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck sank in a fierce firefight, leaving only 118 of her 2,200 crew members alive.
But when a British destroyer came to collect the prisoners, they found an unexpected survivor -
a black and white cat clinging to a floating plank. For the next several months this cat hunted rats and raised British morale -
until a sudden torpedo strike shattered the hull and sank the ship. But, miraculously, not the cat.
Nicknamed Unsinkable Sam, he rode to Gibraltar with the rescued crew
and served as a ship cat on three more vessels – one of which also sank - before retiring to the Belfast Home for Sailors.
Many may not think of cats as serviceable sailors, or cooperative companions of any kind.
But cats have been working alongside humans for thousands of years - helping us just as often as we help them.
So how did these solitary creatures go from wild predator to naval officer to sofa sidekick?
The domestication of the modern house cat can be traced back to more than 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent,
