Based out of Newport Beach, California, Harry Morgan, a former naval officer during the war, is struggling to make ends meet operating a boat charter, primarily fishing trips locally and to/from Mexico, with his friend Wesley Park more often than not by his side as his first mate. Harry was hoping at this point in his life that he would have had a fleet of boats, but instead he is already behind in payments on the one and only, the Sea Queen. Despite the loving and devoted relationship he has with his wife Lucy Morgan, the two who have two adolescent daughters, Amy and Connie, the boat is the one sore point in their marriage, Lucy often encouraging him to get more stable work, such as with her uncle on a lettuce farm, despite she knowing that the sea is the only life he knows and loves. On his and Wesley's latest multi-day fishing charter to Mexico, Harry gets stranded with no money to get him, Wesley and the Sea Queen back to the US. Running into shyster American lawyer F.R. Duncan, Harry, despite being law abiding, has to decide if he will agree to Duncan's request to carry some illegal cargo back into the States, that illegal cargo which would provide him with more than enough money to make the trip back. What he decides begins a series of incidents which threaten not only his livelihood and his marriage - the latter as Lucy becomes jealous of Leona Charles, the woman who was on that fishing charter - but his life in its entirety.