Title: The Ghost of Captain Bayloe
Air date: February 5, 1939
Plot summary: Commodore Ware, a shipping magnate, has just lost a freighter. He is seeking to find out what happened, and he brings along his good friend Lamont Cranston. Ware and Cranston interview the sole survivor of the lost freighter, who tells a terrifying tale.
It involves a flashback 20 years into the past, and the mutiny on a cargo ship captained by one Captain Bayloe. The mutineers threw Captain Bayloe into the sea, stole the ship's cargo (silver), and, it is strongly implied, gang-raped the captain's wife, who died not long after. Before he drowned, Captain Bayloe swore to take vengeance from beyond the grave.
The island closest to where Captain Bayloe was thrown overboard was named Bayloe Island. Commodore Ware's lost ship was just one of a series of sinkings and lost vessels in that area over the last 20 years. The sole survivor of Ware's ship, and most sailors in general, attribute the lost ships to the vengeful ghost of Captain Bayloe. A skeptical Lamont Cranston insists on taking his yacht on an ocean voyage to Bayloe Island. He discovers that the ship sinkings have an entirely non-supernatural explanation.
Tropes:
- Flashback: A long flashback scene recounts the mutiny aboard Captain Bayloe's ship 20 years ago.
- Hand Wave: Lamont had meant to bring Yandey and his minions to justice. He reveals to Margo that, instead, Yandey's surviving victims locked him and his goons into the dungeons, presumably to starve to death. Lamont keeps sailing home however, saying "There's nothing can be done about that now." Why not?
- Karma Houdini: The mutineers from 20 years ago, who murdered Captain Bayloe, stole a cargo of silver, probably gang-raped Mrs. Bayloe, and apparently got away with everything.
- The Mutiny: How Captain Bayloe met his death. A crew of greedy, evil sailors mutinied and threw him overboard 20 years ago. They stole the silver that the ship was carrying, and it is implied that they raped Bayloe's wife. (The sailors note how beautiful she is and speak of her as part of the "prize" along with the silver.)
- Plot Hole: The sole survivor of the most recent ship sinking has a strangely thorough knowledge of the details of The Mutiny 20 years prior, right down to the last thoughts of Captain Bayloe as he went under. One might suspect that the anonymous sailor actually is Captain Bayloe, but no, he's just a random sailor who knows everything.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The villain is not a vengeful ghost, but instead a man named Yandey, not even mentioned before he appears in the story. This man Yandey discovered 18 years ago that Bayloe Island actually has enormous mineral wealth. He's been mining it ever since. He causes shipwrecks by using electronic and magnetic beams to short out ship engines and rudders and steer them onto the rocks. Any surviving crew who make it to Bayloe Island are captured by Yandey's men and use as slave labor in the mines.
- Sea Stories: Lamont Cranston takes to the ocean to investigate a tale of mutiny, piracy, murder, and shipwrecks.
- Sole Survivor: The story of the most recent ship sinking is told by the sole survivor, a mate who was savvy enough to jump into a life raft at the first sign of trouble, escaping the ship before it hit the rocks and was lost.
- Superstitious Sailors: As Yandey himself notes, gullible sailors are only too quick to believe the tales of a ghost bent on revenge. The Captain Baylow story is convenient cover for his own operation of kidnapping and murder.
