What happens
Lou Costello buys a surplus navy boat at a government auction and gets a license from the city hall marriage license bureau by mistake. Bud Abbott tries to talk sense into him while Costello tells a garbled version of Moby Dick, full of misunderstood words and jokes. Costello's plans for a fishing trip with Abbott, Marilyn Maxwell and Connie Haines are set out in the Abbott and Costello radio comedy Costello Buys A Boat, first broadcast on NBC and ABC on February 13, 1947.
Los Angeles, California, in the late 1940s, including a government surplus auction, a city hall office and a fishing trip by boat.
Characters: Lou Costello, Bud Abbott, Marilyn Maxwell, Connie Haines
Listen for: Costello's mangled retelling of Moby Dick and his misunderstandings of nautical and marriage-license terms, which set up Abbott's exasperated replies.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.