Robert Lowery gets some news that he's inherited $200,000.00 and he's got to leave his job as an oil rigger and get to Galveston to claim it. He gets himself mugged on the docks in Tampico and decides to take an earlier sailing tramp freighter as a passenger. But there are some people who want to do him out of the inheritance.
Not only that there's a mysterious dame played by Phyllis Brooks on board, a solicitious steward in Alec Craig and all kinds of other people with mixed motives.
There's two situations going at the same time. Some people are out for the inheritance that he has and another group that means harm to the ship itself. Lowery has to deal with both.
This is not one of the better Pine-Thomas B films from Paramount. It's cheap and it shows. But I will say that Charles Arnt plays a most intriguing and voluble villain. Arnt is definitely taking his cues from Dudley Digges and Sydney Greenstreet as Casper Gutman, though without the gut. Lowery is nowhere near the 'character' that Humphrey Bogart was.
If you watch this film, do it mainly to see Charles Arnt.