This is an AD&D adventure module for 1st to 3rd level characters that came out in late 1981, written by Don Turnbull and Dave J. Browne. It included two follow up adventures U2, Danger at Dunwater and U3, The Final Enemy. Let me say right now, I really enjoyed Don Turnbull's Fiend Folio when it was released earlier in 1981, and it was refreshing to see new creatures for AD&D which I easily adapted for my 0D&D games. Based on what I saw in Fiend Folio I was really looking forward to checking out these new adventures, however was quite disappointed when I finally did get a look at  U1 Secrets of Saltmarsh.

For starters it was an adventure for brand new characters, 1st to 3rd level. We had been playing D&D for five years already at that point and as a GM, I was quite happy with running homebrew adventures for low level characters. One of the advantages of homebrew adventures is that the players can't cheat and look through the module themselves so they can "Win" by defeating the GM, which had reared it's head a couple of years earlier as a problem, especially with newer players. TSR had also got into the bad habit of shrink wrapping all of their games and modules so you couldn't just go down to the game store and get a look at the new adventure, someone literally had to buy a copy, and then open it, before the quality of the adventure would be apparent. We actually took this as a sign that the quality of the new adventures were questionable because TSR was afraid  to let GMs see them before they chose to buy them. They started shrink wrapping their games with the Holmes set of D&D, and had just never stopped after that. Usually at our local FLGS though, the game store owner would open a copy to run the game, and then leave the opened copy on the shelf as a sample, so we could get a look at the new game/module that had been recently released. After awhile though, they got in trouble with their distributors and even stopped giving sneak previews, which killed a lot of sales for them, because I wouldn't buy anything sight unseen.

Anyway I got an early look at Secrets of Saltmarsh right after it was released, and notwithstanding the fact it was an Intro adventure which by that time was practically useless to me as a GM, the first thing I come across is the haunted house. It wasn't particularly large, and it was stocked with generic monsters that were already available even for the 0D&D crew, so nothing new there. ...and that haunted house. My first impression of haunted houses of course had already been established with the release three years earlier of the Judges Guild Tegel Manor. Tegel Manor was huge, had all kinds of traps and scary encounters, many of which were not already listed in other books, and had set the gold standard for what a haunted house adventure should be. This being released like three years later seemed like a knock off  poor copying attempt, and that really put me off from buying it at the time.

I did give it a good going through because I really wanted a new adventure to run for my players, but kept on hitting snags that dulled my desire to use this for my players. Once the players clear the mansion and get down into sea caverns the encounters were unremarkable, linear, and the entire adventure felt forced. It's an almost textbook perfect example of a railroad where no side plots, or optional opportunities for adventure are presented. The players are tasked with simply hunting down and killing the sea pirates, on their ship the Sea Ghost, and looting everything. There are no spinoff storylines available, no option to instead join the pirates, and no true or false rumors the players have to sort through, in fact, it's densely packed with mostly flavorless text and is highly railroad, here's a specific example:

"RANDOM ENCOUNTERS ABOARD THE SEA GHOST
There will be no random encounters other than aboard the ship. No sea monsters, etc., will plague the excise officers on patrol or the party on its way to the boarding attempt.The Dungeon Master must keep in mind that the smugglers are a successful band of organised and intelligent criminals..." ...etc. et al.

Never mind the fact that they anchored their ship, and are an easy target... (my words here)... because they are organized and intelligent criminals!. They lost their lair, yet there is no danger, ...they can just anchor out in Ye Olde Harbour and wait for the murder-hobo players to come along and "surprise them".   There's no stats for other ships, no seafaring adventure map, in short it takes them twelve full pages just to describe how to run a night time boarding action on a sailing ship. We had already done this countless times in our home brew piratical adventures. ...Yawn. This was about every reason I stayed away from later AD&D adventure modules, because TSR couldn't offer a better game than I was already used to running at my table. Of course this was a no-buy for me, and I didn't even bother looking at U2 and U3.

I felt sorry for Don Turnbull, based on the really great monsters he added to Fiend Folio, I'm sure had a better game to offer. Too bad we never got to see it.