Ships, Yachts, and Boats in Old Time Radio Collection

Building ships may not seem as impressive a technological feat as building a castle or a cathedral but consider that fact that a ship is expected to cross oceans, carry its crew and passengers to foreign lands through storms and unknown peril, and, eventually, return them safely home. Castles and cathedrals just kind of sit there.

That element of the unknown is what gives extended voyages on ships and boats their romance. When the vessel has been out of sight of land for several days it is easy to realize that the sturdiness of the ship and the skill of its crew at keeping it afloat are the only things between life and death. No wonder that ships are seen to have personalities and are given names. The sailors who work on them also develop a language of their own.

This seemingly foreign language has led to considerable confusion, so some definitions are in order. What is the difference between a ship and a boat? In the days of sail, a ship was defined as having at least three square-rigged masts and a bowsprit. In modern parlance, the difference is a matter of size; an accepted definition in the US Navy is that ships carry boats, but boats cannot carry ships. The Navy refers to even its largest submarines as "boats", however, so some confusion is understandable.

Yachting is associated with wealth and excess; however, "yacht" comes from a Dutch term for "hunt". The Dutch Navy used swift sailing vessels to chase pirates off the coast of the Low Countries, and these crafts were readily adopted for recreation. Perhaps the best definition of "yacht" is a vessel which does not have to work for a living. That means that the canoe that granddad kept by the pond to fish for bluegills is just as much of a yacht as fashion designer Giorgio Armani's stunning, 150ft, black-hulled MV Main.

Naming ships and boats is another area steeped in tradition and superstition. Many vessel names are given a prefix (not unlike the titles of Mr. and Miss for people), according to the type of vessel is in question; steam-powered ships are sometimes referred to as "SS", while motor powered craft are "MV" and sailboats are sometimes "SV". Ships of Great Britain's Royal Navy are "HMS" for Her Majesty's Ship, US Navy Commissioned ships are "USS" for United States' Ship, while the Coast Guard's ships are United States' Coast Guard Cutters, "USCG".

Because ships and boats have such distinct personalities it is hardly surprising that they are even assigned a sexual identity. Seafaring is a traditionally masculine occupation, and in many cultures, the boats are referred to using the masculine pronoun "he". In the English and American tradition, however, boats are almost universally thought of as feminine, even when they are given masculine names. A sailor from the USS Gerald Ford after a long deployment might tell you, "She came into port yesterday". 

• The Cruise of the Poll Parrot, 1936, Syndicated for the International Shoe Company. The ship in question, the whaler Poll Parrot, was named for a line of children's shoes. The 39-part serial is made up of three 13-part stories, which meant that shoe store owners, who would have been paying for local broadcast of the show in their area, could buy 13, 26, or all 39 episodes. Life aboard a nineteenth-century whaling ship was thoroughly researched and accurately presented on the show, although the language was more "family friendly" and therefore less colorful than we would expect.
• Adventures by Morse, "The Girl on Shipwreck Island", Carlton E. Morse Productions, summer of 1946. Captain Bart Friday and his sidekick and mechanic, Skip Turner, are hired to fly an experimental airplane from Saigon to San Francisco. Naturally, the infernal machine conks out over the ocean with a single postage-stamp sized island in sight. They survive the emergency landing and discover a pretty girl from a shipwrecked luxury schooner, and then have a run-in with pirates!
• The Adventures of Sonny and Buddy, 1936, Park-Edwards Productions Syndication. One of the earliest juvenile serials, in this story arc, our intrepid junior adventurers are aboard a river houseboat which drifts loose with the youngsters aboard.
• Afloat with Henry Morgan, 1947, Australian Syndication. The historic Morgan was a 17th-century Welsh privateer who was a thorn in the side of the Spanish in the Caribbean and eventually became governor of Jamaica.
• The Alan Young Show, May 16, 1947, NBC. Alan gets involved in a yacht race with Hubert Updike, even though Alan operates on a rowboat budget.
• The Aldrich Family, April 30, 1940, NBC, summer replacement for Jack Benny. "Bigger boat syndrome", the desire for a newer, bigger boat, is something every boater goes through, but it has to start somewhere. In Henry Aldrich's case, it is winning an outboard rowboat motor from a breakfast cereal company. In no time, he has the whole town up in arms trying to eat enough cereal to get enough outboard coupons.
• The Pepsodent Show with Bob Hope, October 16, 1945, NBC, AFRS rebroadcast. Bob Hope would have put on a show just about anywhere, as long as there were American Servicemen in the audience. In this episode, he is broadcasting from the decks of the USS South Dakota (BB-57). Her keel was laid down in the summer of 1939 and she saw action at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands and Guadalcanal in the Pacific, the press dubbed her "Battleship X" to prevent sharing intelligence about her movements with the enemy. During the spring and summer of 1943, she was assigned to patrol the North Atlantic to counter the German battleship Tirpitz before returning to the Pacific Theater in the fall. She supports several amphibious landings during the Island-Hopping campaign before being refit at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in summer 1944. A couple of weeks after the Surrender Ceremony South Dakota entered Tokyo Bay before returning to the USA in time for Bob's broadcast.
• Dark Fantasy, March 27, 1942, NBC, WKY Oklahoma City. "Convoy for Atlantis". A reporter and a yachtsman are searching the Atlantic for three missing ships when a radio report come through that passengers have been found, drugged, in the lifeboats. Next, the mysterious Siegfried appears aboard the yacht, offering to escort our heroes to the bottom of the sea.
• Boston Blackie, January 19, 1949, Mutual net. Everyone's favorite reformed jewel thief gets the call when the cops find a boat with a body aboard, and the boat is in the middle of Montgomery Street, miles from any water!
• Bulldog Drummond, June 16, 1948, ZIV Syndication, Mutual, "Death in the Deep". Drummond is on a fishing vacation off Catalina Island in California when a storm drives the boat back into port. While running before the waves they see a swimmer in the water. When they pull the swimmer aboard it is discovered that it is now a body with a bullet hole!
• Calling All Detectives, August 18, 1948, WGN Chicago. Jerry Browning, Private Detective, is on retainer with the Great Valley Railroad Company, so he is the first one they call when a 38-foot yacht is discovered on the tracks.
• Captain Midnight, December 30, 1942, Blue Network, "The Destruction of the Nazi Submarine Base". The Captain and his Secret Squadron are operating in Occupied France to rescue a downed British pilot from the Gestapo. The show closes with Pierre Andre and the Captain making a plea for War Bonds.
• Captains of Industry, January 25, 1937, KNX Los Angeles, Atlas Radio syndication. Young Cornelius Vanderbilt is tired of farming, so makes a deal to buy a boat which he uses to earn a fleet, but his real break comes when he invests in steam shipping.
• CBS Radio Workshop, April 28, 1957, CBS net, "Light Ship". In the days before reliable ship-to-shore radio communication, governments would anchor stout light ships in waters too deep or too far from shore for constructing lighthouses. The primary requirement for a lightship was a relatively tall mast which could support the heavy, bright light, but they were also built to resist rolling. There is only so much roll protection that can be built into the ship which will be anchored against the bitterest of sea storms. Since its job was to remain in a fixed location, life for a lightship crew would have been weeks of unceasing tedium.
• CBS News "Today in Europe", October 16, 17, 1939. America was still officially neutral at this time, so the reporting of German submarines attacking British warships at anchor is almost shockingly even-handed. In the next day's broadcast, the sub's commander is heard, describing the action.
• Cecil and Sally, May 1930, MacGregor and Sollie Syndication. At this point in the ongoing story, the intrepid couple has a romantic date on the lake with a rowboat and manage to become shipwrecked.
• Chandu the Magician, April 1933. Earnshaw Syndications. The mystery takes the magical detective aboard an opulent yacht which naturally breaks down and drifts into danger. There is murder aboard, but the evidence might be lost when the passengers and crew are rescued by a passing liner. There is more murder afoot aboard the larger vessel, and Chandu and his party end up on a sailboat before they are completely safe.
• The Chase and Sanborn Hour, August 8, 1937. W.C. Fields regales us with tales of stunning seamanship during his recent yacht race.
• Counterspy, August 29, 1949, ABC, "The Case of the Bouncing Bank Robber". The government agents get their man after a ferryboat whistle blows an unexpected message.
• Fibber McGee and Molly, June 26, 1945, NBC. The McGee's are getting ready to leave town so that they can spend some time aboard a rented houseboat on Dugan's Lake, which is their signal that the broadcast season is over, so Jim and Marian Jordan are going on vacation.
• Gallant American Women, December 26, 1939, the Blue Network, "Women and the Sea". This effort by the US Office of Education and the WPA tells of women who go down to the sea in ships.
• Have Gun, Will Travel, July 24, 1960, CBS, AFRTS rebroadcast, "Way for the Delta Queen". A pair of paddlewheel riverboat captains will have a race, but Paladin is there to make sure there is no sabotage before the big contest.

For more boating tales in Old Time Radio, see also:  Ships, Yachts and Boats, Cruise of the Poll Parrot, Men at Sea, Racing Boats, Submarines, Battle Stations, Titanic, Naval Battles in OTR, Escape: Ocean Tales, and Spooky Tales of the Sea.