Starring Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan
Announcer: Wallace Greenslade
Music by Max Geldray and The Ray Ellington Quartet
The Orchestra was conducted by Wally Stott
Script: Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan
Producer: Peter Eton
Recorded: Sunday 14 November 1954
First Broadcast : Tuesday 16 November 1954 on the BBC Home Service
Ned Seagoon reads a notice offering a £5000 reward for a solution to the mystery of the Marie Celeste from Grytpype-Thynne, the author of sea stories. Seagoon visits Grytpype, who tells him the tale of the ill-fated Marie Celeste, which was discovered off the Azores all shipshape and Bristol fashion, with food freshly laid, but nobody on board. Seagoon starts his investigations at the offices of shipping magnate Admiral Bloodnok, who manages pleasure-boats. Bloodnok refers Seagoon to the shipyard of Crun, Bannister, and Crun, who built the Marie Celeste. Once Seagoon leaves, Bloodnok phones Crun and tells him that what they had planned for has happened, that Seagoon is the name, and that there’s a £4000 reward. Seagoon finds Minnie and Henry arguing over the proper way to sing a sea shanty. Crun agrees to build a second Marie Celeste and to assemble a crew to re-enact the mystery. The word of the reward passes to the crew man by man, the reward money getting smaller each time, until we reach cabin boy Bluebottle, who hears of a reward of seventeen and ninepence. They set sail in Marie Celeste the Second, planning to rendezvous with Grytpype in the HMS Gladys at the scene of the original mystery. Seagoon pays Bluebottle his seventeen and ninepence to explain to him the mystery, but just as Bluebottle is about to speak he sees Admiral Bloodnok and runs off to hide. Bloodnok orders Eccles to fire a salute to the HMS Gladys. Eccles fires the cannon, and of course Bluebottle was hiding inside. Bloodnok tells Seagoon that they are all the original crew of the Marie Celeste, and that they slipped away in rafts because they knew that someday someone would offer a reward for the solution to the mystery. And now it has happened. They hail the HMS Gladys, but they find that there’s nobody on board. Seagoon offers £5000 reward for a solution to the mystery of HMS Gladys.
The Goon Show Preservation Society 