Name: Barbara
Species: Ursus maritimus
Dates: Unknown
Claim to fame: Naval mascot
Where now: Whale Island, Portsmouth
Forty years ago, in 1975, the Royal Navy banned the practice of taking animal mascots to sea. The rationale was health and safety. But it’s a tradition with a long and distinguished history and one that has resulted in some extraordinary animal journeys.
When British naval officers rescued a polar bear cub from drifting ice off Greenland during World War II, they took her on board their cruiser and made her their mascot. But before long, Barbara outgrew her new accommodation and her custodians dropped her off at the Royal Navy’s training facility on Whale Island, where a ‘sailor’s zoo’ had been established in 1893 to accommodate those animals given to the Navy or brought back from distant shores. By 1935 there were lions in spacious cages, marsupials in grass paddocks and birds in aviaries.
Having such an exotic and dangerous animal aboard a Royal Navy ship was more common than one might imagine. Accounts of 19th-century ships, particularly abroad, frequently record occurrences of ships carrying animals as pets and mascots. We are perhaps familiar with the ship’s cat or the dog attired in a naval cap, but far more unusual animals could be found aboard the ships of the Royal Navy.
Buried alongside Barbara are some other interesting animals, including Jack, a parrot that lived for 30 years on Whale Island, having survived a cyclone in Samoa in 1889 on board HMS Callipole. There are also dogs, (including a sled dog from Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition), horses, peacocks and a black bear called Amelia. Tirpitz the pig, whose story has been covered in an earlier Animal Magic post experienced a rather different fate, auctioned off to raise funds for the British Red Cross.
Some of the animals that sailed with the Royal Navy were collected for a specific scientific purpose or to sell to zoos and pet shops. Others were purchased from local traders and adopted as pets and mascots, providing companionship for the sailors during long tours of duty.
Some, like the cat, had a practical purpose. The mongoose too was a relatively common ship’s pet, adept at catching cockroaches and rats. Some stations were synonymous with a particular animal. At Esquimalt in British Columbia, for instance, it was common practice to adopt a black bear cub (as occurred in the case of Amelia). In Malta, it was common to obtain a goat. In the Falklands, one ship adopted penguins, though these weren’t a great success. The seamen complained of the birds’ habit of nipping at loose limbs hanging out of hammocks.
But by far the most common on-board animals were exotic birds, which could easily be taken home with the sailors after the commission. For example, the men of HMS Implacable bought several hundred birds in Malta, the Bonaventure adopted 104 canaries, a parrot and five parakeets, and the Encounter brought home over fifty parrots.
Unfortunately, despite many appeals from the sailors based on Whale Island, most of the island’s animals were shot during the World War II amid fears that the more dangerous ones (which included several big cats) would escape in the intense bombing Portsmouth received.
Tale Ends
As yet, nobody has succeeded in identifying the light cruiser that collected Barbara from Greenland waters and in which year. Can anyone help?
If you have any interesting photos of Royal Navy animals, please get in touch @WayOfThePanda.
Over the Christmas holidays, The National Museum of the Royal Navy in Portsmouth will host a Polar Bear Trail for young children, loosely based on Barbara’s story. From Saturday 19 December 2015 to 4 January 2016 (excluding 24-26 December, inclusive).
