[2][3] It is about an ocean liner sunk by a German U-boat in 1939 whose wreck is discovered in 1981, with over 300 survivors and their descendants living in an air bubble inside the ship.
On September 4, 1939, the British ocean liner RMS Goliath, carrying 1,860 passengers, is torpedoed by a German U-boat and sinks within minutes while on a transatlantic crossing to the United States three days after the outbreak of war.
Oceanographer Peter Cabot (Mark Harmon) hears systematic banging and music coming from the ship[4] and is shocked to see the face of a beautiful young woman (Emma Samms) inside a porthole.
Cabot and his colleagues discover 337 people, survivors and their descendants, living in an air bubble in the wreck caused by the vessel's having slowly sunk in relatively shallow water.
The residents of Goliath, who have invented some technologies to help them survive, some not even known to the outside modern world, live in a superficially utopian society under the autocratic leadership of John McKenzie (Christopher Lee), a junior officer at the time of the sinking credited with saving a sizable number of passengers and crew.