Directed by Elmer Clifton, the film stars William Walcott, Marguerite Courtot, and Clara Bow.

Captain Charles W. Morgan is a well-respected businessman who owns a fleet of whaling ships in the Quaker town of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

His son and daughter-in-law were lost ten years before while on a whaling expedition; eventually, their baby, his granddaughter Dot, was found "in a chest on a raft bundled in sail cloth."

Learning of Dexter's love for her, he has his fellow con artist Jake Finner, "fearless, lawless and godless", drug the young man's drink and has him kidnapped, tied up, and placed on the next outgoing whaling vessel, hoping never to see him again.

Wanting to prove himself to Morgan, he decides to put all his effort into working long hard hours to win his chance to harpoon a whale, which would make him an accomplished whalesman.

[1] The film's title cards are notable for having quotes from Herman Melville's Moby-Dick and Alexander Starbuck's History of the American Whale Fishery.