AllMovie

In 1906 Sweden, Captain Lars Larson (Knute Erickson) goes on a sea voyage, leaving his wife (Marcella Daly) behind expecting their first child. Unbeknownst to him while he is at sea, a bitter rival kidnaps her and makes it look as though she left him willingly. When he returns and discovers their home abandoned, he all but goes mad with bitterness and rage, destroying their home. In the years that follow, Larson becomes a sadistic, drunken reprobate of the sea, working for smugglers carrying all kinds of illegal cargo, including drugs -- and human cargo. A cruel, bitter man with a mean streak a mile wide, he has only one soft spot that he knows of, for animals, possibly because his dog remained faithful and stayed, rather than leaving with his wife. Cut to 1925 and the United States Navy's history-making flight from San Francisco to Hawaii -- Larson is still carrying his illicit cargoes, and has a new request from the Chinese smuggler Wing, for a white girl. These two sequences of events manage to intersect, as Larson's ship puts down on a desert island where a young white woman (Virginia Fry) lives with a much older hermit, at just about the same time that the navy flight is forced to set down at sea adjacent to the same island. Matters come to a head when Wing sets his sights on the girl; Larson discovers at just about the same time that she is his daughter, born 19 years earlier when her mother was rescued from the ship where she was being held by the sympathetic first mate, who has become the grim, seemingly disheveled hermit. Larson recovers enough of his right mind that he will do anything to protect the girl, even sacrificing himself -- but can he and the navy men stop Wing and his band of cutthroats?