- Florida ship salvager Loxi falls for Jack, captain of a ship wrecked on the Key West shore. However, their romance is complicated by the arrival of another suitor.
- Clipper ships taking the shortest route between the Mississippi and the Atlantic often end up on the shoals of Key West in the 1840s. Salvaging the ships' cargos has become a lucrative business for two companies--one headed by a feisty young woman. Then she falls in love with the captain of a wrecked ship while he recuperates at her home. She travels to Charleston and is charming to the man most likely to be head of the captain's company, thinking she will be able to get the captain the position he wants on the company's first steam ship.—Dale O'Connor <daleoc@interaccess.com>
- In 1840, America's line life is the sea, with an intense commerce. In Key West shore, two ship salvage companies dispute the wrecked vessels. The honest one belongs to the impulsive Loxi Claiborne and Capt. Phil Philpott and the other one is owned by the unscrupulous pirate King Cutler. While rescuing the crew of the ship "Julliete", wrecked on the reeves by the First Mate Mathias Widgeon, Loxi falls in love for Captain Jack Stuart. She travels to Charleston to defend Jack and convince the ship owner to give the position of captain of the new steamship of the company, manipulating the powerful shipping company lawyer Steve Tolliver (Ray Milland), who also falls in love with her. This love triangle leads Jack to bad, fatal choices.—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Along the Florida Keys, Loxi Claiborne runs a ship-salvage business rivalled only by the unscrupulous King Cutler. Loxi rescues and falls in love with Jack Stuart, who comes to believe that his rival for Loxi, Stephen Tolliver, has sabotaged his chance at a new ship. Mistaken but vengeful, Stuart joins forces with Cutler with tragic results.—Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>
- In 1840, there's work on the Florida Keys for honest salvagers like the Claibornes and outright pirates like King Cutler, who bribes sailors to cause wrecks. When Capt. Stuart's ship is wrecked, Loxi Claiborne rescues him, falls for him, and travels to Charleston to convince the owners the wreck wasn't his fault; company lawyer Steve Tolliver returns with them to Key West to investigate. Tolliver and Stuart's rivalry for Loxi's hand complicates their swashbuckling adventures in pursuit of Cutler, ending in a trial and a dangerous dive for evidence.—Rod Crawford <puffinus@u.washington.edu>
- It is 1840 in the Florida keys. Feisty Loxi Claiborne is running the family salvage business following the death of her father. Shortly after a hurricane blows through the area word comes that a ship has foundered on the reefs. Loxi and her salvage master Captain Phil head out on their ship, the Claiborne, to claim salvage rights, competeing with other ships.
The sinking ship is the Jubilee, and a rival salvager, Captain King Cutler, has already arrived. Cutler fires a salvo across the bow of Loxi's ship to warn her off. Suspecting a planned scuttling, Loxi agrees to save some of the crew, while denied part of the cargo salvage. Thus she meets Captain Jack Stuart, unconscious and lashed to the mast when his ship hit the rocks.
Loxi lives with her widowed mother and a visiting cousin from Havana called Drusilla. Also living in the house is a colored servant who helped raise Loxi. Drusilla happens to be involved with King Cutler's brother Dan, but must be secretive about it.
Bringing him home to recuperate, Loxi and Jack eventually fall in love. He tells her that his dream is to command a new steam ship, the Southern Cross. But Jack feels that an important man within the Deveraux company, which owns the ship, has it out for him, and will use the sinking of the Jubilee to deny him the Southern Cross. Jack plans to go to Charleston to plead his case; as it happens Loxi also plans a trip to Charleston with Drusilla to visit her aunt.
Loxi meets Steve Tolliver at a party in Charleston. Steve is the important man that Jack referred to. Finding that she is unable to talk to a very ill Commodore Deveraux, head of the shipping line, Loxi decides to "wrap that Steve Tolliver around my little finger," in order to secure command of the Southern Cross for Jack. Loxi flirts outrageously with Steve and at a dance everyone there assumes they are a couple. When she realizes this, Loxi stops the music and announces her real love is Jack, and that she intends to marry him. Later that night they plan to wed on board Jack's ship before he sails back to the Caribbean. But Steve interrupts the ceremony in time, throwing Loxi into the bay and jumping in after her, then ordering the ship to sail.
Leaving Charleston, Drusilla returns home to Havana and Loxi and Steve return to Key West. Steve has come to rid the Keys of pirates like Cutler. Cutler in turn arranges to have Steve shanghaied by the crew of the whaler Tyfib. Loxi hears of the plot and gets Jack to help her save Steve. Later they discover that Steve has Jack's appointment to the Southern Cross with him. Angry over a seemingly underhanded act, Jack meets with Cutler before sailing to Havana to take command of his new ship.
Rumors circulate and prices of the cargo of the Southern Cross go up and down wildly, leaving Steve to suspect a wreck is planned. He commandeers the Claiborne with Loxi on board and heads to Havana to stop Jack. Using an axe to part some lines, Loxi disables her ship and they sit becalmed in a fog bank as the Southern Cross piles into a reef and sinks. Unknown to Jack, Drusilla had stowed away to return to Dan Cutler and she is drowned.
Jack is put on trial for wrecking his ship and the testimony reveals a woman may have been on board, though none was rescued. To determine if a woman's body is in the wreck, Steve agrees to dive with Jack to the wreck, which sits on a shelf just below the surface, but on the edge of a deep trench. On the dive ship Captain Cutler instructs one of his men to sever Steve's air hose, but Captain Phil intervenes in time.
While down in the wreck Jack and Steve discover proof that Drusilla was on board and has been drowned -- her distinctively colored shawl is seen swaying in the undersea current in the hold of the Southern Cross.
Taking proof back with them that could hang Jack, they are attacked by a giant squid. Steve becomes ensnared in a tentacle of the squid, but Jack's basically good nature prompts him to attack the squid, which releases Steve. Up above a large wave surges toward the small fleet of ships supporting the dive. Loxi knows the sunken ship could be swept into the deep and urges that the two men be brought up. As the men up top race to bring up the divers one of the lines parts, and one of the divers is lost as the Southern Cross slips into deeper water.
When the rescued diver resurfaces, it turns out to be Steve. Captain Phil philosophizes that Jack "went down with his ship."
Loxi winds up with Steve in Charleston.
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