Able Seacat Simon: The Wartime Hero of the High Seas

Epilogue

Simon (or Blackie, as he was known to most of the Amethyst’s crew) died on 28 November 1949, succumbing to enteritis, a complication of the virus he’d probably contracted at the quarantine centre he’d been sent to in Surrey. For a young cat to die of such a virus was very unusual, but it was suggested that perhaps he had been born with a weak heart and that his many injuries from the shelling, not to mention daily battles with large, aggressive rats, might also have taken their toll.

Members of the Amethyst’s crew, who had been to visit him – including Captain Kerans and his wife – felt very differently. As did Telegraphist Jack French, who maintained that Simon’s death was much more likely to be due to a broken heart, as a result of being separated from, and perhaps believing he had been abandoned by, the shipmates who, since Ordinary Seaman Hickinbottom had plucked him from the docks in Hong Kong’s Stonecutters Island, had been the only family he’d ever known.

‘I think Simon died because he lost the company of sailors,’ he is reported as saying. ‘He was quite content to be aboard the ship. They could quite easily have left him aboard the ship and he could have gone on to the next commission. I firmly believe he died of heartbreak. He pined away.’

No one knew for sure how old Simon was at the time of his death, but it was believed that he was less than four years old, and probably much younger. It was tragically young for a cat to die, particularly one who’d displayed such devotion to his military duty, and who’d captured the hearts of a nation. The nation certainly mourned him; scores of condolence cards were sent to him, and he even had a tribute paid to him in the obituary pages of Time magazine. A few days later, his body wrapped in cotton wool and his tiny coffin draped in the Union Jack, he was laid to rest at plot 281 of the PDSA’s pet cemetery in Ilford, after a funeral service with full Naval Honours.

Simon’s Dickin medal – the only one ever awarded to a cat – was accepted on his behalf by Lieutenant Commander Kerans on 11 December, in the company of the officers and men of the Amethyst. It stayed on board the frigate till the ship was scrapped in the 1957, when it was moved to the Naval Trophy Store on HMS Nelson, in Portsmouth, before being auctioned off and sold to a collector in Canada.

The medal resurfaced again as recently as 1993, by which time Simon’s story had become known throughout the world. And his celebrity – something he always shied away from – had obviously not waned; when it was auctioned by Christie’s in 1993 with a guide price of around £3,000 to £5,000, it fetched £23,467 – the highest amount for such a medal ever received.