Transportation stories

[Tammyfan]

I am preparing an entry on Bound for Botany Bay for the Jinty blog. This is the only transportation story I have ever seen in girls comics, and I am wondering if there are others. Surely there must be?

[Tammyfan]

The Bound for Botany Bay entry is up now http://jintycomic.wordpress.com/2014/07 ... -bay-1976/

[Phoenix]

This story should be reprinted and distributed in all marginal constituences about three months before the next General Election on a Be careful what you wish for basis to all voters of a socialist, democratic and liberal persuasion who might just be tempted to vote Tory.

[Tammyfan]

This story should be reprinted and distributed in all marginal constituences about three months before the next General Election on a Be careful what you wish for basis to all voters of a socialist, democratic and liberal persuasion who might just be tempted to vote Tory.

Reckon it's good enough to consider for our 100 best girls comics strips then?

[Phoenix]

Reckon it's good enough to consider for our 100 best girls comics strips then?

I realise, Tammyfan, that by your use of the Very Happy smilie, and despite the question mark, you are assuming that I do consider it good enough for inclusion. For me though, its storyline is more linear than broad, its focus too narrow, to be a great story. However, the sheer unremitting nature of the vindictiveness of the well-to-do, the obsessive determination to grind the poor and unfortunate into the dirt, does reflect what I believe our current government is doing in a more dishonest and less graphic way. My whimsical and completely unrealistic distribution suggestion did nevertheless embody a hope that in our non-fictional world enough ground-down Tory voters will have a Damascene experience before the next election, rather than the one they are sure to have after a Tory victory when they realise what they have done to themselves. It is so easy to forget that 80% of the cuts are still to come! I hope this explanation has not gone too far .

[Tammyfan]

Reckon it's good enough to consider for our 100 best girls comics strips then?

I realise, Tammyfan, that by your use of the Very Happy smilie, and despite the question mark, you are assuming that I do consider it good enough for inclusion. For me though, its storyline is more linear than broad, its focus too narrow, to be a great story. However, the sheer unremitting nature of the vindictiveness of the well-to-do, the obsessive determination to grind the poor and unfortunate into the dirt, does reflect what I believe our current government is doing in a more dishonest and less graphic way. My whimsical and completely unrealistic distribution suggestion did nevertheless embody a hope that in our non-fictional world enough ground-down Tory voters will have a Damascene experience before the next election, rather than the one they are sure to have after a Tory victory when they realise what they have done to themselves. It is so easy to forget that 80% of the cuts are still to come! I hope this explanation has not gone too far .

Ok then. By the way, do you know of any transportation stories from DCT?

[Phoenix]

By the way, do you know of any transportation stories from DCT?

By the law of averages there must be some, but unfortunately I can't recall any at the moment.

[DavidKW]

Whilst not from DCT, in 1966-67 ffrom IPC, June & Schoolfriend ran a strip called Captain Kate, about a girl called Kate who inhetits a shipping fleet & its staff.

I think there were a few stories about transportation & the problems involved (eg trying to deliver an order in very trecerous storm, with Kate herself taking the risks).

Was a good concept, which could & should have ran longer than it did (one where Kate sets up a pirate radio station is a concept which could have run).

[Phoenix]

I think there were a few stories about transportation & the problems involved (eg trying to deliver an order in very trecerous storm, with Kate herself taking the risks).

The kind of transportation serials that Tammyfan is seeking, David, are those about transporting criminals from one country to a penal colony, or settlement, in another, as from England to New South Wales in Australia in the late 1700s.

[Phoenix]

By the way, do you know of any transportation stories from DCT?

I realise that this information is probably way too late for you to use, Briony, but I have just come across another transportation serial. It is called Botany Belle and it appears in Bunty 1554 (Oct. 24 1987) - 1565 (Jan. 9 1988). It tells the story of how 15-year-old Lady Merrilee Manners, the ward of Sir Anthony Manners and heiress to Roxham Hall, is the subject of a substitution plot organised by Miss Fallon, Lady Merrilee's governess, who is accompanying her to Roxham Hall, because Sir Anthony, who has not seen Lady Merrilee since she was five, and a pupil at Miss Burt's Select Academy for the Daughters of Gentlemen, has sent for her. The girl that Miss Fallon actually takes to Roxham Hall and passes off as Lady Merrilee is Belle Thorn, a ragged actress with some strolling players and a thief. Lady Merrilee gets five years in the Botany Bay penal colony for theft where by chance she becomes a personal maid to Lord and Lady Redford's two daughters.

The plot takes an interesting turn when one of Sir Anthony's Roxham Hall dinner guests mentions the marvellous investment opportunities that are opening up in the new colonies in Australia, and that Sir Charles Redford has already taken up residence there, because Sir Anthony tells him that Redford is a close friend and has already invited him out there to look things over. He decides to go, and will be taking his ward and her governess with him. Lady Merrilee finds this out when Lord Redford's daughters are talking about it, wondering what Lady Merrilee will look like.

There are lots of ups and downs in Lady Merrilee's fortunes while Sir Anthony is on the high seas and in Botany Bay, but as fortune would have it, just as Sir Anthony is about to return to England, Betsy, now Lady Constance Bigley's maid but formerly a laundry worker at Miss Burt's Academy, recognises Lady Merrilee, who is then in a position to be able to remind Sir Anthony of many events in their joint past that Belle Thorn would never have known. Sir Anthony, who for some time has found it difficult to believe that his brother's child could be as empty-headed and frivolous as Belle, is delighted with the outcome, as is Lady Merrilee, who is determined to do all she can to improve the lot of the suffering convicts, and to spend her life trying to eliminate the poverty and misery that turns them into thieves and felons in the first place.

[Tammyfan]

Thank you, Phoenix. Somehow I get the impression the topic was not used much. Maybe they preferred to use workhouses, factories, mines and horrible schools in their historic stories.

But I do remember a story in a Diana annual where a girl visits a stately home and she finds a portrait of a sad lady. She has a kind of vision where the lady pined away and died because the man she loved foolishly turned to crime to try to raise the money to marry her and got transported. He escapes and returns to her, only to find she has just died. After the vision the girl tells the lady in the portrait that her lover did come back and finds the lady is suddenly looking much happier.

[Phoenix]

I do remember a story in a Diana annual where a girl visits a stately home and she finds a portrait of a sad lady. She has a kind of vision where the lady pined away and died because the man she loved foolishly turned to crime to try to raise the money to marry her and got transported. He escapes and returns to her, only to find she has just died. After the vision the girl tells the lady in the portrait that her lover did come back and finds the lady is suddenly looking much happier.

It was The Tell-Tale Ring from Diana For Girls 1975. See the first page below.

[Tammyfan]

Ah yes, I remember the title now. Thank you Phoenix.