Spooky Tales of the Sea

The men who "go down to the sea in ships" tend to be a superstitious group, with good reason. Once you get out of sight of land, there are many, many things which can kill you. That far out to sea, it is highly unlikely that anyone back home will ever know what happened to you.

Perhaps, sailors, perhaps, are not so much superstitious as they are cautious. There is no logical proof that beginning a voyage on a Friday will result in disaster, or that whistling a happy tune on the deck of a sailing vessel will call up storm winds. You simply cannot prove that these calamities will occur, but you cannot prove that they will not, so why take unnecessary chances?

The sea covers more than two-thirds of the planet's surface, which means that a world where mankind is supposed to have dominion is largely unexplored by humans. Oceanographers like to point out that more men have stood on the surface of the moon than have been to the Marianas Trench, the deepest spot in the oceans.

Consider the giant squid. These monsters can be from thirty to almost fifty feet in length and weigh hundreds of pounds. For millennia, giant squids have been thought the stuff of legend because science had never seen one, although there were reports of the monsters or their body parts washing up, dead, on remote beaches. Science has yet to figure out a reliable way to photograph a giant squid in its natural habitat, the only known video of a giant squid in the wild was shot off Japan in 2012.

Which begs the question, if something as big as giant squid can hide from us, what else might be lurking in the unknown depths?

As scary and dangerous as a life at sea can be because of the natural and supernatural forces at play there. The greatest danger on a voyage can come from one's fellow passengers and crew. By centuries-old tradition, a vessel's master has absolute authority, indeed the power of life and death, over those who sail with him. This tradition arose from the fact that the captain has absolute responsibility for the souls which board his vessel. However, history has shown that a captain may succumb to what he sees as a higher responsibility to his mission or another obsession. When that happens, woe be to those sailing with him.

Going to sea has always been seen as a way to escape one's transgressions onshore. Not everyone who sets out on a voyage is a fugitive from justice, of course, but over the course of the journey, those aboard the vessel may get to know one another better than husband and wife, and the picture painted is not always a happy one.

• The Weird Circle, 1944, "The Ancient Mariner". This adaptation of Coleridge's immortal poem uses actors and modern speech in place of the author's colorful but sometimes confusing language, but it retains the darkness and gravity of the original work. Coleridge's publisher informed him that several copies of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" were sold to sailors who thought it was a collection of sea songs.
• Guest Star Theater, December 26, 1954, "The Blue Albatross". An American girl was murdered in London and the killer is drinking his memories away in a Melbourne waterfront bar. The Australian authorities know what he has done and are enthusiastic to allow an American schooner with a freight of wheat for Liverpool shanghais the killer. When he awakens from his stupor, he sees that the ship is being followed, by a blue albatross.
• The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, June 16, 1947, "Death in the North Sea". A diamond merchant married a much younger girl and then took a young business partner. Naturally, the partner and the wife fall in love, but the diamond merchant refuses a divorce. Naturally, the business must be dissolved, but the partners make a final buying trip to Amsterdam. Returning on the evening steamer, the partners argue, and the older merchant winds up shot in the head.
• Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, November 5, 1949, "The Island of Tin-You-Tan" of "The South Seas Adventure". The Grand East Company took out life insurance on a crew of six for a pearling expedition. The insurance company hires Johnny after hearing that the bodies of two of the divers are hacked to pieces on the island and the others are missing. Dollar travels from Port Moresby to Tin-You-Tan and finds a massacre in paradise.
• Author's Playhouse, July 8, 1944, "The Kraken" by Frederick Englehart. A British sub on war patrol evades enemy fire with a crash dive but is trapped beneath the sea by a giant Kraken, a mythological giant octopus.
• CBS Radio Mystery Theatre, April 2, 1982, "The Naval Treaty". The great Sherlock Holmes is coaxed out of retirement to help a young man working in the Foreign Office. The official had been assigned to work after hours to copy an important secret document, but when he turns his back for a moment the original document disappears. Can Holmes match wits with a modern criminal mind?
• Escape, July 28, 1947, "Typhoon". Joseph Conrad's classic tale of life at sea under a skipper whom the narrator does not understand or particularly like. The steamer works the South China Sea between Singapore and Hong Kong. The ship takes on 200 coolies as passengers for Fu Chow and runs into a sudden storm.

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.