Simon

And their deaths became the emotional fuel for a conflict that killed thousands more on both sides across Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.

Where does Tom fit into that? Honestly at the edge of it, which is exactly the point he wasn't a hero in the way Simon of HMS Amethyst would later be decades on he didn't do anything except survive an explosion that killed most of the crew around him getting thrown through Decks of steel and get found crying on the wreckage by an officer who cared enough to save him But that is exactly why history matters here.

Thomas proved that even a disaster used to sell a war to an entire nation.

Individual survival, animal or human, was real, was documented, and mattered enough to the men who lived through it that Wainwright made sure the ship's cat got treated for his wounds before anyone was thinking about headlines.

The dockyards of Hong Kong.

A 17-year-old Royal Navy seaman named George Hickenbottom finds a malnourished black-and-white stray kitten wandering the docks and, against regulations that technically didn't allow it, smuggles him aboard the frigate HMS Amethyst.

The crew names him Simon.

Within weeks, he's earned his keep the old-fashioned way, clearing rats out of the lower decks.