The River Monarch

Any excuse to see Australian movie legend Chips Rafferty is to be taken even if he's horribly miscast as an Irish colonel from the Inspector General's office. The Aussie speech pattern is unique and as good as Rafferty is ain't no way he's Irish.

Rafferty is assigned to investigate the disappearance of a big shipment of gold that was sunk in a river steamboat which was unearthed and the accident was a planned one, like the Maine in Havana harbor. He was also Peter Breck's commander in the Civil War.

Turns out that the famed Knights of the Golden Circle, a Confederate spy group did the job, but the gold never reached the Confederacy and it's still out there. The daughter of one of them played by Katherine Justice has had a thing for Nick Barkley.

Anyway the conflicted Rafferty seems determined to blame the late Tom Barkley who had a big piece of the steamship line. You have to see Barbara Stanwyck's spirited defense of her husband who's not around to defend himself.

Peter Breck gets himself shot twice in this episode, but he's a tough man, one of the toughest of TV cowboys ever.

Good show, but maybe they should have gotten Pat O'Brien instead of Chips Rafferty.

Anytime you have Nick being shot twice in one episode you know you are in for an action packed show. And this story provides everything that you want from a Nick Barkley featured show.

When a small boy accidentally hooks a piece of a sunk Barkley ship it starts a chain of events that are very favorable to the Barkley clan. Seemed that years ago the ship was carrying a large amount of gold for the government and blew up on the river. Since only one person survived the explosion the exact location of the sunken riverboat was unknown.

Now as they recover the boxes that was to contained gold bars- they instead find worthless lead bars. It is believed someone stole the gold and sank the riverboat on purpose to cover up the crime. And all the talk is that Tom Barkley (the dead father of the clan) was the one that stole the gold.

The US army sends an old friend of Nicks named Jock in investigate the missing gold bars. With the Barkley's giving him room and board it becomes awkward when evidence points to Tom for the theft. And to make matter even worse, Jock is not really the true friend that Nick believes.

Throw in some confederate sympathizers and a women Nick has feeling for- and you have an episode that is full as a barrel-of-monkeys. By the end of the show Nick has been shot twice and 'shot-at' five or six times. Needless to say this episode should have be title "The Nick Barkley Show". But with all the action it was still a good story for the viewer.