A disgraced merchant marine officer elects to stay aboard his sinking cargo ship in order to prove the vessel was deliberately scuttled and, as a result, vindicate his good name.

Ex-army sergeant Jed Givens and his gang rob an army payroll shipment led by Lt. Hemp Brown. Givens kills a civilian woman and all the soldiers, leaving Brown alive to face a military tribunal in which he is branded a coward, stripped of all insignia and drummed out of the army. Brown sets out to track down Givens in an effort to clear his name.