Plot: Gaunt Gables is a house
built in remote saltmarsh - they say it was built by a smuggler and some insist it is haunted. This hasn't bothered John and Anne Carter or their twelve-year old son Adam, now on home from boarding school for the holidays. Adam sets about exploring the attic however and when he finds a model sailing ship named The Albatross and blows on a dusty old bosun's whistle he is transported through Time to the deck of the real Albatross. Sapphire and Steel investigate the history of the ship thanks to a phone call to the Royal Naval Museum in Greenwich. The Albatross was built in 1784 but sunk on October 14th 1790. Time wishes to use Adam Carter to alter the course of history - a French spy was aboard the vessel but drowned when it sank, unable to pass on his plans of British coastal defences. Time is restored to its proper course when Steel shoots the circling seagull possessed by the Time force.
Comments: A text story, illustrated
in black and white by Arthur Ranson and presumably written by
Angus Allan again. Like the WWII story it's a bit of a stretch to imagine Sapphire and Steel doing flatfoot research into naval history! By this time the format for the strips has become slightly formulaic and this tale is reminiscent of several of its predecessors.
