Perce Blackborow

Perce Blackborow aboard Endurance, 1914, with Mrs Chippy on his shoulder A young Welsh sailor, turned down for the crew in Buenos Aires for his youth, who stowed away anyway with help from two shipmates. The cat belonged to the carpenter Harry McNish, and despite the name it was a tom. Blackborow paid for his place later: frostbite turned to gangrene, and on Elephant Island the surgeons Macklin and McIlroy removed the toes of his left foot.