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- Varvara Myagkova
‘Peter the Great’ was a cat that was the sole survivor of a volcano eruption at White Island off the North Island coast of New Zealand in 1914.
‘Peter the Great’, the White Island camp cat, only survivor of the 1914 landslide which killed all the sulphur workers on the island. Photo pasted into Bernard Sladden’s album, Ms 33c/1. c 1914.
At the time the ‘Bay of Plenty Times’ reported on September 14th:
‘DISASTER AT WHITE ISLAND. PLANT AND MEN OVERWHELMED.’
” A huge landslide, most likely the result of an eruption, had entirely demolished the camp and buried all ten of the workers under a deep layer of hot mud. In the weeks after the disaster, wreckage from the plant was washed up on Tauranga beaches, but no trace of the men was ever found.”
The only survivor was ‘Peter the Great’, one of five camp cats, pictured here with his rescuer.
He recovered from his ordeal to live to a ripe old age in Opotiki and is said to have fathered many kittens in the town.
On the 9th of December 2019 White Island Volcano erupted again and killed 17 people who were visiting the Island at the time.