The Case of the Malicious Mariner

Robert Armstrong, famed for King Kong, is hauling cargo. The ship ends up in a bad storm, and the second in command decides to get rid of the cargo after Armstrong is injured. It turns out that there is a big time insurance scheme going on. The young First Mate is seen as careless and that he overreacted. He is brought before the Coast Guard and Perry defends him, but Armstrong, who could help him, is killed, and Junior is accused. The problem with this is that the whole plot is so full of holes and so improbable it's laughable.

No, this Perry Mason does not channel the famous Coleridge poem, however it concerns the aging captain of freighter that nearly sinks at sea during a storm en route from Japan to to California; and once safely in port things appear amiss amiss on this troubled ship; and its master is none too happy about the way his first mate took control of his boat from him. The younger man saved the ship, but where's the cargo?

This is a Perry whose plot is so convoluted as to cause he heads of all but the most experienced Perry savvy viewers heads to spin. The story is well told, and most of the non-regular characters come off as either suspicious or a bit shady. The plot is good example of the Something's Wrong With This Picture that's at the core of its story. What makes the episode one of the better in the series is how obvious it was that the police were barking up the wrong tree.

This isn't a brilliant episode, yet it was handled expertly by its cast and crew. There are a couple of red herrings, and lots of possibilities put forth as Perp Of The Week

Lee Farr who saved a tramp freighter from going down only by jettisoning the cargo is Raymond Burr's client when Farr asks Perry Mason to represent him before a Coast Guard hearing. Of course he later needs Burr as his attorney to defend on the charge of murdering the captain of the vessel where Farr was the first mate and who pulled a mutiny as the ship was foundering in a storm. Sounds familiar doesn't it, but at least Captain Robert Armstrong wasn't rolling any ball bearings.

This was an episode where the writers got a little too complex with the plot. Just so happens that the cargo jettisoned was some factory equipment that Farr's brother Edward Binns was shipping from Japan to the USA. It also turns out that William Hopper has to go all the way to Japan to salvage the cargo and finds out it's just scrap iron. Who pilfered the cargo then?

And on that score there are a couple of frauds being perpetrated by people both against the insurance settlement and against each other. Don't doze off or you'll miss something and the whole thing won't make sense.

At the criminal trial and the Coast Guard hearing Perry Mason is worth every dime you pay him.

The stack of crates seen dockside when Perry gets the ticket are marked Claver Collection Rio de Janeiro, which is the name and coordinates of the art collection that was reportedly torched in The Case of the Torrid Tapestry (Season 4 Episode 23).

Another comment under Goofs states that while in court Perry reads from the wrong side of a piece of paper, the blank side. Having just watched the episode on MeTV, I think Perry is attempting to make the witness believe he is reading a document but is in fact stating his theory of the actual murder, thus catching the murderer.