A convoy of forty-five ships try to make it from Halifax to England. The convoy becomes the butt of enemy submarine torpedoes. Terror strikes the crews who see their comrades drowning or becoming human torches amid the burning oil spilling from the ships. Attention focuses on the s.s. Regal Gesture, whose engines fail and is therefore left behind, undefended. Can the s.s. Regal Gesture make port with a fire in her hold, an unexploded bomb in her forecastle, with no wireless and a half- crazed man for a skipper?