![]() ![]() It is difficult to be sure what Luce felt about this reunion, but a short article in The Times in late 1917 gives a clue. The Whale Island authorities bundled Tirpitz into a van – "it took 10 men" – and returned the wayward pig to the custody of Captain John Luce, former commander of HMS Glasgow and now commodore of the Royal Naval Air Service Training Establishment at Cranwell in Lincolnshire (which would become RAF Cranwell upon the foundation of the Royal Air Force in 1918). When she broke down the chicken runs to raid their food, radical action was required. She was in good company: there were chickens, ducks, geese, even a "wallaby paddock". ![]() In spite of its gender, the men of HMS Glasgow took delight in naming her after the head of the German navy Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and facetiously awarded her the German military decoration, the Iron Cross, for staying with her ship to the last.įor a time, Tirpitz lived a charmed life on board before taking up residence at the Royal Navy's training facility on Whale Island in Portsmouth Harbour in 1916. Ratings on HMS Glasgow recovered the pig which, once winched on deck, would become prized as the ship's living, live-in mascot. Among other things, they salvaged a dinghy, oars, a boathook, buoys, six chairs, hammocks, brooms, fenders and even "a cask of red wine undamaged by its immersion in the sea". A medical officer on board HMS Kent recalled the exercise with glee: "We thoroughly enjoyed our tub-hunting expedition," he wrote. While some British seamen went ashore to round up the shipwrecked survivors, others clambered into tenders to recover what booty they could from the water. ![]()
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