Unsinkable Sam was given a new job as mouser-in-residence at the governor general of Gibraltar’s office. He eventually returned to the U.K. and lived out his years at the Home for Sailors....
BITS 'N' PIECES
The most famous mascot of the British Royal Navy, Unsinkable Sam, previously known as Oscar, was the ship’s cat aboard the German battleship Bismarck. When the ship was sunk in 1941, only 116 out of a crew of more than 2,200 survived — 117 if you include Sam. Sam was picked up by the destroyer HMS Cossack, which was in turn torpedoed and sunk a few months later, killing 159 of her crew. Again, Sam survived. Sam then became the ship’s cat of HMS Ark Royal ... which was torpedoed and sunk in November of that year. Sam was rescued once again, but after that incident, it was decided that it was time for Sam’s sailorship to come to an end.
Unsinkable Sam was given a new job as mouser-in-residence at the governor general of Gibraltar’s office. He eventually returned to the U.K. and lived out his years at the Home for Sailors.
The Boiling River is in the central Peruvian Amazon, in the middle of low jungle. From Lima it’s about an hour flight to the city of Pucallpa, the largest city in the central Peruvian Amazon.
The total river system is about 9 kilometers (5.5 miles), but it is the 6.24 kilometers (3.8 miles) on the lower part of the river that are hot. Most of that flow, particularly during the dry season, is hot enough to kill you. Small mammals, reptiles, or amphibians regularly fall in and are boiled alive.
According to local traditions, the Boiling River is a place of tremendous spiritual power.
There are three main scientific hypotheses for the existence of the river. First concern was whether the river was natural or not. To create a large geothermal system like this, you need three things: a tremendous source of heat, a large volume of water, and a plumbing system that will take this hot water from depth all the way up to the surface.
One of the hypotheses was that this was a volcanic feature, a magmatic system that the scientists had missed. It could also have been a non-volcanic feature, i.e. hot water flowing out of the earth at an anomalously high rate. The deeper we go into the earth the hotter it gets.
The final theory is that this place was not natural at all but the result of an oil field accident. The river is only 2-3 kilometers from the oldest active oil field in the Peruvian Amazon. If there was an oil and gas flow that only produces hot water but no hydrocarbons or gas, they might just have abandoned it. Another possibility is that an oil and gas flow accidentally drills into a geothermal system.
The Boiling River is a natural feature: a non-volcanic, geothermal feature flowing at anomalously high rates.
