Written by Alan Fennell and directed by Desmond Saunders, it was the eighth episode filmed and was first broadcast on 18 October 1964 on the Anglia, ATV London, Border, Grampian and Southern franchises of the ITV network.
Headquartered at the self-contained city of Marineville on the West Coast of North America, the WASP operates a fleet of vessels led by Stingray: a combat submarine crewed by Captain Troy Tempest, Lieutenant "Phones" and Marina, a mute young woman from under the sea.
However, they fail to notice a platform built into one of the floors and are lowered into a watertight section in bowels of the ship, where they are met by an undersea pirate called Idotee.
Idotee, who never intended to leave anyone alive, has tied Shore and Phones to chairs in front of a double-barrelled cannon rigged to fire harpoons into them.
[3] Writing for the fanzine Andersonic, Vincent Law compares "The Ghost Ship" to the episodes "A Nut for Marineville", "Pink Ice" and "Invisible Enemy" for the way in which the characters react to the threat posed by Idotee.
Law also praises the flute music that accompanies the first appearance of the galleon, describing the piece as "unforgettable" and arguing that it "perfectly encapsulates the whole series.
The strip was published over three issues of Fleetway Editions' Stingray: The Comic, which followed it up with a feature giving the backstory of Idotee, revealing him to be more than 200 "marine years" old.