Emory Johnson Productions

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 twenty-year veteran of the printing room of The San Francisco Chronicle is passed up for a promotion at the same time his son is accused of graft and involved in scandal. The historical landmarks of old San Francisco are present: The Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Building, City Hall and the Pickwick Hotel-- but they don't distract from the dramatic and emotional perforamces at the film's center.

Jack Donovan, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, refuses to throw a game for gambler Mike Moran. Moran retaliates by breaking up Donovan's family. Believing that his wife and son died in the sinking of an ocean liner, Donovan stays in baseball and, 20 years later, becomes manager of the New York Giants. What he doesn't know is that his family isn't dead and his son, Jack Jr., is now grown and looking for revenge against his father for what he believes was his abandonment of them.

The plot, old-hat though it is, does provide an opportunity for that wonderfully seedy villain, David Dirby, to do his dirty work and more importantly, to tie all the thrillingly on-the-spot railroad footage together. Railroad buffs will enjoy all the atmospheric detail director Johnson has obtained by filming in real freight yards and inside and alongside real steam engines and rolling stock.