John Hodiak plays a deep-sea diver who decides to take just one more chance with his life—in an attempt to haul up $3 million in treasure from a ship, the Adomar, sunk forty years ago bound for Morocco; it didn’t get too far. It also seems to have had a secret cargo. Hodiak’s character was a Navy diver and demolition expert who decided he has had enough and wants a job where he can be on land supervising dives and not doing them. But his first offer of a civilian job is too good to pass up. A wreck hunter has located the sunken Spanish galleon Adomar, but for health reasons cannot make the dive himself. It is 24 fathoms down (144 feet), and is believed to have $3 million in gold. That’s $35 million in current US$2024! If he succeeds, he will get one-fifth, or $7 million in today’s dollars. The offer is much too good to turn down and worth the risk. He makes his descent safely, and confirms it is the Adomar. As expected, the ship is on its side, in a gulley, which can make the retrieval process more dangerous than usual. He determines where the gold is likely to be. There’s danger. Before he can board the ship, his lifelines have become tangled and he is slowly sinking into a sticky mass of mud. After that brush with peril, he learns something else about the ship: it is packed with explosives that it was smuggling when it sank, hit by a torpedo. How can they safely reach the gold without disturbing the dangerous cargo which might still be active?
The story is surprisingly good, and compares well with another story about treasure hunting, Salvage, with Van Johnson https://suspenseproject.blogspot.com/2024/03/1950-04-06-salvage.html
It is hard to believe that in about 30 months, Hodiak would pass away at age 41 from a sudden coronary thrombosis.
It is amusing how the CBS publicity strategy around Murray’s writing had changed. For his first script, Case History of a Gambler, there was a promotional stunt where Lewis fired Murray for the broadcast day because he thought he’d be so nervous that he’d miss his cues. (Unlikely; Murray trained fighter pilots in WW2). This time, the publicity states that “Murray will be in charge of the effects for his own show” as a plain matter of fact. As one would expect, the effects for this production are excellent, especially for when Hodiak’s character is underwater.
Jargon:
strong room: a secured room with heavy steel walls where valuables were kept. The walls, roof and ceiling are reinforced with thick steel plate. They often had double locks. The room was usually in a high traffic area of the ship where personnel would pass the room all hours of the day and night for observation and as a deterrent. Usually only the captain and the person who owns the items in the strong room have keys.
CQD was a Morse code distress signal “Seeking you. Distress!” or “All stations. Distress!” It was later replaced by SOS.
The recording suffers from some wow and flutter, but is the better than of all circulating recordings.
LISTEN
TO THE PROGRAM or download in FLAC or
mp3
https://archive.org/details/TSP530119
THE CAST
JOHN HODIAK (Nick), JOSEPH KEARNS (Carl), Clayton Post (Fred), Charles Calvert (Gordon), Larry Thor (Narrator)
COMMERCIAL: Tom Holland (Sheriff), Harlow Wilcox (Announcer)
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