A freighter captain's family suffers financial difficulties. To help them, he involves himself in a plot to destroy his ship so they can collect the insurance money. They plan to destroy the vessel by loading it with a time bomb and then sailing it into an active mine field. En route, a crewman becomes trapped in a boiler and burns to death. This forces the captain to dismantle the bomb. He feels better for having done so and returns to Hamburg, where he learns that not all of his family approved of the plan either.