November 9, 2026

Blackie, the Cat of HMS Prince of Wales

In 1941, a ship's cat became famous after meeting Winston Churchill. Four months later, his battleship was sunk, and Blackie's story took a very different turn.

In August 1941, Winston Churchill was returning to the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales when he encountered a cat apparently trying to make his way onto an American destroyer. The cat was Blackie, the battleship's mascot. Churchill bent down to pet him, and a photographer captured the moment. The photo became one of the memorable images of Churchill's wartime visit to meet US President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But Blackie's story didn't end with that famous encounter.

A cat aboard the Prince of Wales

We don't really know how Blackie first came aboard HMS Prince of Wales, or who decided he should become the ship's mascot. The battleship had already seen some action during World War II, including the Battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941, when British forces engaged the German battleship Bismarck.

That August, Prince of Wales took Churchill across the Atlantic to Newfoundland for meetings with Roosevelt. The two leaders discussed the principles that would become the Atlantic Charter, laying out their goals for the war and the peace to come.

During the visit, Blackie showed some interest in the American destroyer USS McDougal, which was alongside the British battleship. As Blackie made his way to the gangway, Churchill stopped to pet him. The moment was photographed, and Blackie soon got a new name: Churchill, after the prime minister himself. For a little while, the ship's cat became a celebrity.

The sinking of the Prince of Wales

Four months later, on December 10, 1941, the HMS Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser HMS Repulse were attacked by Japanese aircraft off the coast of Malaya. Both ships were sunk, with heavy casualties. The sailors who survived were rescued by nearby destroyers and taken back to Singapore. Blackie made it out too.

According to stories about the ship’s cats, he made it ashore with some of the crew and joined them at the Sime Road Royal Air Force Station in Singapore. He stayed with the men, shared their rations, and moved with them from camp to camp as the Japanese advance continued. The cat who used to roam around the decks of a British battleship was now living on land with its surviving crew members.

President To Prime Minister (1941) · Newsreel by the Newsreel Association of Great Britain via British Pathé

The last sighting of Blackie

By February 1942, Singapore was facing an imminent Japanese attack, and some of the men looking after Blackie received orders to evacuate at short notice. But Blackie was away on one of his hunting trips, so the crew scrambled to find him before they had to leave. With only hours to prepare for evacuation, they eventually had no choice but to go without him. Sadly, Blackie was never found, and what happened to him after that is unknown. Singapore fell to Japanese forces on February 15, 1942.

There’s a well-known photo of Churchill reaching down to pet Blackie, which captures a little slice of normalcy during such a chaotic time. But there's another part of Blackie's story worth remembering: even after losing their ship, the surviving sailors kept looking out for him, sharing what little they had and taking him along as they moved around Singapore. When it was time to leave, they looked for him one last time. And that is where the known story of Blackie ends.

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