The Voyage of the Scarlet Queen — 1947

The unaired pilot for the series, built around the murder that would become the show's recurring engine: Howard Duff plays Karney here, with Elliott Lewis as his first officer, and the killing that opens the story is blamed on a man named Van Gort -- renamed Constantino when Mutual reworked the audition into the first network broadcast.

The Scarlet Queen finally gets underway from San Francisco at half past two in the afternoon, nearly a full day behind schedule -- the delay traced to the killing of the ship's previous first officer, a case the log simply files under the Shanghai Secret.

No sooner has the Queen tied up at Honolulu than another boat comes alongside with an offer Karney can't easily turn down, and the pursuit of the ten-million-dollar cargo pulls him into a run of double-crosses, secret meetings, and bodies.

The third broadcast of the series, carrying the Queen and her crew onward from Moonin Jima toward Kobe on a leg the log records simply as eventful.

A mutinous turn by the first officer puts three of the crew in sick bay, and when Karney gets to the bottom of it, the cause traces back an ocean away -- to a Boston geisha and Chesapeake Bay.

At Tientsin, the Queen's departure is held up twelve hours after several of Karney's officers land in jail -- booked, the log says, under the White Cargo Act, with Ah Sin somewhere behind the charge.

The Queen clears Swatow at nine in the morning, but not before Karney trades blows with a Portuguese trader named Avala -- a fight the log blames on the story of the eight historic periods.

Shore leave at Manila is cancelled without warning and the Queen sails at nine that morning instead, the abrupt change of plan logged under a barefoot nymph and a Mother Hubbard jacket.

A scheduling breakdown keeps the Queen in Hong Kong until nine at night, and when she finally clears port the delay is charged to jewel thieves and a straw-filled dummy -- the broadcast that also gives Cathy Lewis's Hank Ainley her best-remembered appearance.

The Queen clears Haiphong at nine in the morning after someone moves her in the night without logging it -- an irregularity Karney chalks up to the courtship of Anna May L'Amour.

Karney sails out of Singapore on the heels of a run-in with the colony's Deputy Public Prosecutor, an altercation the log lays at the door of shore leave and an unhappy wife.

Barely clear of British North Borneo, the Queen runs into trouble from outside her own crew -- complications the log ties to a fat trader and a sword said to come from Apokaejiam.

Making her first landfall south of the equator at Macassar, the Queen takes on an unexpected visitor: a stranger calling himself Van Ryper, master of the lugger Triani, who offers good money to hand off some passengers of his -- with no explanation of what's driving the offer.

Six degrees south of the line, the Queen leaves Bouillon Valley behind after a dispute over ship's stores draws Karney into a scheme involving Ah Sin and a Balinese beaux arts ball.

Two degrees north of the line off Sangihe, Karney clears Sangee Island having made good on a promise -- one that led him, by the log's account, straight to Kang's treasure and the ghost of Tangolan Bay.

Logging out of Hong Kong at twenty-two degrees north, Karney notes a piece of business competition successfully eliminated -- credit going, by his own account, to a beautiful girl in a bargain basement.

Clearing Kwangchow at twenty degrees north, Karney records an entanglement with foreign interests that the log ties to the huntsman's quarry and a dead Chinese.

Off the Vietnamese coast at ten degrees north, the Queen sails two passengers lighter than she arrived, the loss blamed in the log on a green tourist and a temple bell -- a title that hides a pun, since the trouble turns out to involve a temple belle rather than a bell.

A hot, bright morning finds the Queen threading St. George's Channel into Simpson Harbour, closing out a long, slow haul down from French Indo-China -- and no sooner is the hold emptied than a fresh cargo is already swinging aboard.

Four degrees south in the Phoenix Islands, Karney leaves Hull Island having gotten tangled up in local tribal belief -- trouble the log attributes to Red Beard and a bag of pearls.

The series' Christmas broadcast, set at Christmas Island -- appropriately enough -- where Karney's path crosses that of the fifteenth llama and a wise guy from the East.

Fourteen degrees south at Pago Pago, the Queen clears Tutuila with Karney freshly clear of a murder case -- one the log connects to Hattie McCormick and a remarkably patient stowaway.