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A new play by Donald Pleasence
Based on the novel by R.L. Stevenson
Television version and production by W.P. Rilla

[Photo captions] Michael Golden plays Captain; Frank Pettingell plays Attwater; Jack Rodney plays Huish; Hugh Burden plays Herrick
Others taking part: Cecile Maurice, Jaron Yaltan, Boscoe Holder, Ben Johnson

The action takes place in Papeete, on board the schooner Farallone, and on an uncharted island in the Pacific

At the opening of Ebb Tide we find three down-and-outs on the beach, at Papeete, in the year 1892. There is Captain Davis, the derelict drunkard; there is Herrick, the young man of family, now gone to seed: and there is the villainous little Cockney, Huish.
They are saved. Out in the harbour lies a schooner, the Farallone, her captain and white crew dead of smallpox, with a cargo of champagne from 'Frisco to Sydney. The Captain is given command; and the ship sails out into the South Seas. And they come to an uncharted island, and its strange, religious-tyrannical owner, Attwater.
Attwater, a pearl-fisher, is also a fisher of souls. Asked what brought him to the South Seas he replies, 'Many things. Youth, curiosity, romance, the love of the sea, and - it will surprise you to learn - an interest in missions. Not the parsonish kind, with roses and church bells and nice old women bobbing in the lanes. My religion is a savage thing - like the universe it illuminates. Savage, cold and bare, but infinitely strong.'
He found the island by accident and 'since then I have had a business, a colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was a Christian, and I am a man of the world still. I made my mission pay. No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight, and work up to his weight; then I'll talk to him, but not before.'
An oddity of oddities, this elegant and fanatic Attwater, but more than a match for the men who plan to despoil him. Stevenson's dramatic invention was working at full flood in Ebb Tide. (Lionel Hale)