Kent County Council has printed a load of postcard images to promote local history and their local history centre. They are reprints of local scenes, mostly without dates – but which appear to be taken at the turn of the twentieth century.
One of the cards features the Convict Ship “Success” – something which I have researched before. Following an inglorious life transporting convicts to Australia as the ‘last floating hell‘ (though some say this isn’t true), the ship was turned into a hulk in Melbourne, where in 1857 the prisoners rebelled and murdered the Superintendent of Prisons, called John Price.
The link to Thanet, and presumably where the photo originates, is that the ship was later turned into a museum which toured around the country from 1894 (this link has a photo, apparently taken in Ramsgate) – finally sailing across the Atlantic in the early 20 century, where it changed roles a few more times before being destroyed by vandals in 1946. A fitting end, some might say.
There are some photos here of an old guidebook to the museum, mostly with inaccurate information! And here is a random article about it from the 1930s..
I have now established that the ship visited Ramsgate in the Summer of 1902 from local newspaper records.
fascinating. You and I are thus connected somehow, me in Melbourne and you over there =)