The stowaway craze of the 1920s

[boingboing]

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/10/the-stowaway-craze-of-the-1920.html

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[gracchus]

Stowaways were a popular device for novels of the age, too

30 years later, stowaway fiction was a lot more bleak:

The Cold Equations

[Ambiguity]

Yea, but there’s this!:

Stowaway to the Moon (TV Movie 1975)

I have vague memories of it, having been solidly in the target demographic when it came out.

[stinkinbadgers]

[Neovison.vison]

I grew up reading my grandmother’s Billy Whiskers books (the adventures of an early 20th C American goat), and yes, there was so. much. stowing. away. (Also so. much. historical. racism.) It think there was even one called Billy Whiskers Stowaway!

[agger_modspil]

Discussed previously on Boing Boing by @doctorow :

Apparently, editor John W. Campbell sent back three rewrites in which the pilot figured out how to save the girl. He was adamant that the universe must punish the girl.

The universe wasn’t punishing the girl, though. Godwin was – and so was Barton (albeit reluctantly).

The parameters of ‘‘The Cold Equations’’ are not the inescapable laws of physics. Zoom out beyond the page’s edges and you’ll find the author’s hands carefully arranging the scenery so that the plague, the world, the fuel, the girl and the pilot are all poised to inevitably lead to her execution. The author, not the girl, decided that there was no autopilot that could land the ship without the pilot. The author decided that the plague was fatal to all concerned, and that the vaccine needed to be delivered within a timeframe that could only be attained through the execution of the stowaway.

It is, then, a contrivance. A circumstance engineered for a justifiable murder. An elaborate shell game that makes the poor pilot – and the company he serves – into victims every bit as much as the dead girl is a victim, forced by circumstance and girlish naïveté to stain their souls with murder.

Moral hazard is the economist’s term for a rule that encourages people to behave badly. For example, a rule that says that you’re not liable for your factory’s pollution if you don’t know about it encourages factory owners to totally ignore their effluent pipes – it turns willful ignorance into a profitable strategy.

[Boundegar]

“My friend Laurie Gwen Shapiro has just published a book about one famous stowaway who went all the way to Antarctica…”

Why, what a coincidence, because one of this season’s newest anime is about people who stow away to Antarctica. They’re adorable schoolgirls, like all Japanese people, and episode 1 doesn’t actually spoil the ending, but I don’t think any of them get thrown out the airlock.

Sora yori mo Tooi Basho

It looks a lot like an update of Yama no Susume, but with penguins.

[knoxblox]

It seems a decade before, as well.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Sharer

[HankChapot]

Flagpole sitting and dance marathons were more a part of the 1930s, after the depression hit. And tree-sitting joined the craze…

http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2008-06-26/article/30396?headline=Tree-Sitting-Since-1930

[Michael_R_Smith]

Yeah I remember it too. I can’t recall where the boy was supposedly hiding but the LM is a possibility. It’d be a rough ride. And its not even infeasible too, when you remember the number of stupid mistakes NASA have made over the years. They don’t protect themselves against hazards where they don’t see a risk.

[euansmith]

I wonder how many of these Stowaway Adventures ended up as missing persons? Kids can be so ignorant of their vulnerability.

[anon30760835]

“Who are the flapper thrill-seekers who now run away to sea—usurping a prerogative once held solely by the boys?”

and more importantly, did you get her number?

[sockdoll]

Also an infamous stowaway:

[strangefriendbb]

A joke I heard On the Johnny Carson Show:

The first mate discovers a female stowaway on the ship. He asks how she got on board & she says she got a sailor on board to hide her for, ahem, considerations. The mate remarks that the sailor got the better of the deal, since the boat was a ferry.

[FGD135]

I’ve seen that, also while being in the target demographic. IIRC I quite liked it.
Also, the kid saves the CM pilot’s life while the other two astronauts are away on the Moon in the LEM.

Edit: @Michael_R_Smith: he hid in a storage compartment of the CM.

[anon3072533]

Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet

Author born in 1912…I’m wondering if she was influenced in some way by the stowaway craze while she was growing up.

[Michael_R_Smith]

@FGD135

he hid in a storage compartment of the CM.

Makes a good story but I don’t think there’s the space for that. Also the way the Earth atmosphere is bled down to 0.25 bar may have left the air in the CM unbreathable for a while.