A British submarine once kept a fully grown reindeer aboard the vessel in WWII. This reindeer was kept on the HMS Trident for six weeks straight. They took care of it because it was said to be a gift from their Russian allies.
100 Mind-Blowing HMS Facts
Handy brandy. Rather than bury Nelson’s corpse at sea after his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, it was preserved in a cask of brandy stored in the hold of HMS Victory for a London burial.
Unsinkable stoker. Arthur Priest was a stoker on the Titanic. Stokers were among the unlikeliest crewmen to survive a sinking ship, or even a badly damaged one. Sea water would flood their compartments first, drowning them. The rest of the crew would scramble to shut watertight doors to save the ship, trapping their comrades in the compartments below. Somehow though, in chronological order Priest survived: a collision on RMS Asturias’ maiden voyage, 1908; a collision on Titanic’s sister ship, RMS Olympic, 1911; the sinking of RMS Titanic, 1912; the First World War sinking of HMS Alcantara, 1916; the First World War sinking of Titanic’s other sister ship, HMHS Britannic, 1916; the SS Donegal First World War sinking, 1917