Cast
The regular voice cast included Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, and Arsenio Hall. Guest voices were provided by Jack Angel (as Captain Jack Higgins) and Burton Sharp.
The episode features Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz, and Slimer, along with the ghost pirate Captain Jack Higgins, his crew, the captain's parrot, treasure hunter Max Palopolis, and the pirate ship Stag. Janine appears but has no dialogue.
Ghostly antagonists
Captain Jack Higgins is the episode's main antagonist and the captain of the ghost pirate crew. In life he was known as the "blackest pirate to sail the seven seas," and the appearance of his ship the Stag was considered an ill omen. Ray identifies both ship and captain on sight, placing the last recorded event of this magnitude at 200 years before the episode's events. Among Higgins' abilities is a preternatural sense for the location of his doubloons, which ultimately draws him and his crew to Palopolis's museum. Notably, Higgins already knows who the Ghostbusters are when he first encounters them, remarking "So, they must be the four who aren't afraid of ghosts!" The captain is accompanied throughout by a parrot he clearly despises but cannot seem to be rid of.
The Stag is Higgins' ship, manifested as a ghost vessel built of ectoplasmic lumber. It is capable of sailing through the air as well as water, which it uses to enter New York City from the harbor.
Jack Higgins' crew behave with the wide-eyed confusion of men three centuries out of their time: they rob a man from Houston of his clothes, stand baffled before store mannequins, gorge themselves at a supermarket, and return with loot that includes a yellow cowboy hat.
Plot
A scuba diver recovers a strongbox marked with the emblem of a stag from the seafloor. At the Firehouse, Ray and Winston are tuning up Ecto-1 when Ray brings up Max Palopolis, a famous treasure hunter Ray has long admired, who has just opened a maritime museum to exhibit his latest find: 600 gold doubloons.
Out at sea, a ship sails into a strange fog. The captain says he has never seen anything like it in 24 years at sea before a second ship appears and opens fire. A Coast Guard cutter arrives and issues a warning to the pirates, only to be boarded itself. The alarm sounds at the Firehouse and the team responds. Boarding the wrecked vessel, Egon reports tremendous latent P.K.E. Peter finds the crew tied up below deck and watches a parrot pass straight through a wall.
The attacking vessel is a ghost ship crewed by ghost pirates. Captain Jack Higgins declares he means to take back what is rightfully his. Ray identifies the ship by its figurehead as the Stag, vessel of Jack Higgins, and notes that an event of this magnitude was last recorded 200 years earlier. After an exchange of fire, several pirates swim to the docks and toss the Ghostbusters into the water.
The Stag rises out of the water and sails into New York City, where Higgins lets the crew disperse to pillage. The pirates rob a man from Houston of his clothes, are baffled by store mannequins, and gorge themselves on produce at a supermarket; one returns with a yellow cowboy hat. Meanwhile Ecto-1 runs sluggishly, and the team discovers Slimer is the cause, hiding under the hood. Ray realizes the strongbox Palopolis recovered belongs to the ghosts, and the crew sets sail for the museum.
Palopolis refuses to cooperate and orders the Ghostbusters out. He had long been an idol of Ray's; meeting him in person disabuses Ray of that admiration. Egon judges the area around the museum suitable for an ambush. When the Stag approaches, Peter fires a cannonball into it, a moment he has always wanted. In the chaos Slimer fights the captain's parrot. Winston also gets a long-wanted moment, swinging into the fight Tarzan-style. As the pirates gather around the treasure, the Ghostbusters trap the Stag, then the crew, and finally Captain Higgins along with the parrot. Palopolis is furious about the damage, but the Ghostbusters hold their ground. They take Slimer out for an ice cream cone, and he keeps the yellow cowboy hat as a souvenir.
Equipment and locations
The Ghostbusters use Ecto-1, their Proton Packs, particle throwers, a trap, and the P.K.E. Meter. Winston worries aloud whether the Containment Unit is large enough to hold the captured ship. Locations include the Firehouse and the Palopolis Maritime Museum.
Captain Jack Higgins and the Stag served as a visual touchstone for later IDW Publishing comics. On page 23 of Ghostbusters International #4 the Caribbean Pirate Ship Manifestation bears superficial similarities to Higgins and the Stag. On page 9 of Ghostbusters 101 #4, one of the Pirate Ghosts of Ellis Island is visually modeled on Higgins in panel 3, and crew members from "Sea Fright" appear in panels 4 and 6. In Ghostbusters: Dead Man's Chest Issue #3, Kidd's Ghost Pirate Army running amok in New York City is described as reminiscent of what Higgins' crew did in this episode. Captain Jack's skull also makes a non-canon cameo in the upper-left corner of page 16 of Ghostbusters: Get Real Issue #2.
Notes and trivia
When the call comes in, Peter quips about gremlins at the Guggenheim and porcupines in the park. Gremlins are encountered separately in the episode "Don't Forget the Motor City."
Ray's line that Jack Higgins was the blackest pirate to sail the seven seas echoes the description usually reserved for the real-world pirate Blackbeard.
The trucker who appears in this episode later turns up in "Venkman's Ghost Repellers."
A pair of recurring animation errors crop up: in the opening Firehouse scene Ray speaks with his back to the camera while Winston's lips move, and at the museum the color of Higgins' stolen cowboy hat flickers between yellow and the black hat he wore earlier.
The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection lists the episode as number 055 by air order and number 017 in DVD order, where it is preceded by "Play Them Ragtime Boos" and followed by "The Spirit of Aunt Lois." By air date it falls between "The Spirit of Aunt Lois" and "Ghost Fight at the O.K. Corral."
References
