The large transatlantic liner Benjamin Franklin departs from Genoa for New York. Detective Jim Simpkins is on board, transporting the criminal Reginald Gatling, who he arrested in Europe, to the United States. During a storm, the ship begins to sink, but due to the detective's indecisiveness, they get on deck too late, when all the boats with the escaping passengers and crew have already sailed. Nevertheless, the liner remained afloat, and the remaining Simpkins, Gatling and the daughter of an American billionaire, Miss Vivian Kingman, who was rescued from the water, drift across the ocean until the current takes them somewhere into the inner region of the Sargasso Sea.
