Ray Milland returns to the series for an “actual event” story that may be one of the more faithful Lewis-era “semi-documentaries” in terms of details as they were understood at the time. “The Yangtse Incident,” also known as “The Amethyst Incident,” took place in 1949. The event that occurred on the Yangtse River for three months in the summer of 1949, during Chinese Civil War. The Communist People's Liberation Army (PLA) denied four British ships a right of passage along the river that they had used for many decades, or longer. The ships were forced to withdraw permanently from Chinese territorial waters.
The event inspired the book on which this episode is based, and other historical and academic works, and a movie. It is still studied by historians and those interested in international and maritime law. Many revelations, decades later, have details about the back channel negotiations between Britain and China that started and ended the incident. They remain the subject of research and debate.
The story requires some attentive listening to keep track of all of the persons involved in the story and the historical background that is provided in the narrative. Milland delivers a fine performance, as he did in other Suspense broadcasts.
This episode is based on the best-selling book Yangtse Incident by historian Lawrence Earl. He was a highly regarded war correspondent for the Montreal Standard and lived in London where he had access to many of the key figures involved in the incident. His book was adapted for Suspense by veteran scriptwriter Gil Doud.
Details about the incident can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amethyst_incident An interesting resource page is at https://www.battleships-cruisers.co.uk/hms_consort.htm and more details and more recent perspectives. Some of this information was not known at the time Earl was writing his book.
A movie based on Earl’s book was released in 1957. It became very popular and can be viewed at YouTube https://youtu.be/tHM7heoAmlU There is also a British newsreel at YouTube that shows the Amethyst returning to Hong Kong https://youtu.be/_yuyk0WtjbA
The original script title was “The Yangtse Incident,” but that was changed to The Log of the Marne for a reason unknown at this time. Earl may have been in negotiations over movie or other rights for his book. “Marne” is the name of a river in France where there was an important battle in 1914 between Germany and France. It became the name of two British destroyer ships. The first was a launched in 1915, used in the fighting of WW1 and decommissioned in 1921. The other was launched in 1940 and was still commissioned at the time of this story. Why “Marne” was picked is not known, but those familiar with WW1 events would have sensed a certain appropriateness about the name.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP511022
THE CAST
RAY MILLAND (Harland), Ben Wright (Fraser), Joe Kearns (Moore), Charles Davis (Winster), Antony Ellis (Alden), Jack Kruschen (Kung / Lamb), Raymond Lawrence (Lillis), Bill Johnstone (Nisbett), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland (Hap), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer), Sylvia Simms (Operator)
###
