What happens
Captain Roy Dalton, newly granted his master's papers, is recruited by his old friend George Wainwright to serve as first mate aboard the whaler Paul Parrot. Dalton has doubts about the ship's owners, Grange and Sons, and their unusually generous pay for whaling crews. Their suspicions grow when a dark-complexioned Spaniard steals Dalton's papers and a series of shots are fired on the waterfront. Wainwright agrees to sign on, sensing that something more than a whaling voyage is afoot. The episode introduces the main cast, including the ship's one-legged sailor Dickon and his parrot, the young Ezra Grange, and the children Johnny Robbins and Little Sue Grange.
New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1858, a center of the whaling industry
Characters: Roy Dalton, George Wainwright, Johnny Robbins, Little Sue Grange, Ezra Grange, Dickon, Paul Parrot
Listen for: The dark-complexioned Spaniard and the shots fired at the waterfront hint at a mystery behind the whaling voyage.
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.