IS IT a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s quite obviously a plastic mouse wearing a tight yellow suit and red cape.

Introducing Mighty Mouse, the official mascot of Her Majesty’s Ship Chatham, who’ll be accompanying the frigate and her fine ship’s company on all their escapades.

A mouse has long been a symbol of the ship (he’s painted on the foc’s’le and you’ll also find him on officer’s cummerbunds).

Now he’s taken on a more human form, courtesy of an 8in (well, he’s a mouse, after all) figure who goes wherever the Devonport frigate goes.

The RN hasn’t had ‘real’ mascots for thirty years when rabies regulations put the kibosh on cats, dogs, rabbits, bears and other creatures (HMS Lancaster did, however, have Sunny the Parrot, but she’s now retired).

But sailors being sailors, they can get around the small inconvenience of Admiralty regulations: a number of ships have taken Flat Stanley (the squashed youngster) to sea, and HMS Newcastle got miles of publicity out of Salty the Bear, a cuddly toy who was the mascot of a North-East school who sailed the world and told children of his adventures.

That’s something Mighty Mouse is keen to do; as yet he’s not affiliated with any particular school, but he does have his own web page (part of Chatham’s site here) to recount his deeds around the globe.

So far those have included racing to the top of the Rock (apparently he flew while his shipmates ran...) and regularly accompanying Chatham’s weapons engineer officer Lt Cdr Chris Smith who can never be seen without his jumper, even when it’s warm.

There is, of course, a serious side to these vermin-related shenanigans – to bring the actions of the Royal Navy to as wide an audience as possible.

As for Chatham herself, she’s currently in the Mediterranean and Adriatic alongside HMS Illustrious and HMS York on Exercise Noble Midas, an international exercise off the coast of Croatia.