Mrs Chippy facts for kids
Mrs Chippy on the shoulder of crew member Perce Blackborow
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| Species | Cat |
|---|---|
| Breed | Felis catus |
| Sex | male |
| Died | 29 October 1915 Antarctica |
| Years active | 1914–1915 |
| Owner | Harry McNish |
| Appearance | Mackerel tabby |
Mrs Chippy was a male ship's cat who accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917.
Life
Mrs Chippy, a tiger-striped tabby, was taken on board the ship used by the expedition's Weddell Sea party, Endurance, as a ship's cat by carpenter and master shipwright Harry "Chippy" McNish ("Chippy" being a colloquial British term for a carpenter). The cat acquired its name because, once aboard, it followed McNish around like an overly attentive wife.
One month after the ship set sail for Antarctica it was discovered that, despite her name, Mrs Chippy was actually a male. By that time, however, the name had stuck. He was described as "full of character" by members of the expedition and impressed the crew with his ability to walk along the ship's inch-wide rails in even the roughest seas. In Captain Frank Worsley’s diary he describes Mrs Chippy climbing the rigging "... exactly after the manner of a seaman going aloft".
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Mrs Chippy’s voyage was not without incident. Storekeeper Thomas Orde-Lees, in a diary entry dated 13 September 1914, relates that "An extraordinary thing happened during the night. The tabby cat jumped overboard through one of the cabin portholes and the officer on watch, Lt. Hudson, heard her screams and turned the ship smartly round & picked her up. She must have been in the water 10 minutes or more". The cat was retrieved by the ship’s biologist, Robert Clark, using one of his sample nets.
After the Endurance became trapped in pack ice and was destroyed, Shackleton decided that Mrs Chippy and five of the sled dogs that had been carried on board would not survive.
McNish was very attached to Mrs Chippy and never forgave Shackleton for having him killed. McNish died, destitute, in Wellington, New Zealand, in September 1930, and was buried with full naval honours in an unmarked grave in Karori Cemetery. The New Zealand Antarctic Society placed a headstone on the grave in 1959. To this they added a life-size bronze statue of Mrs Chippy in 2004, funded through public subscription, to complete a tribute and memorial to the carpenter and his much-loved cat.
In February 2011, Mrs Chippy and expedition member Perce Blackborow were featured on a postage stamp issued by the South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
See also
In Spanish: Mrs. Chippy para niños
- List of individual cats
