Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and the truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.
A hard-living dockworker finds religion until his brother is murdered.
When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
An undercover officer tracks waterfront corruption from California to New Orleans and back.
Jewel thieves, murder, and a manhunt swirl around a sailor off a cargo ship in post-war London.
An artist and sailors save a fishergirl from abduction.
George Raft plays a sailor who sets out to solve his father's mysterious death.
A rookie assistant DA is assigned to investigate the murder of a longshoreman, killed for exposing gangster involvement on the piers, and meets up with a "code of silence" amongst all potential witnesses.
Hoping to put the cuffs on criminal mastermind Socks Barstow, detective Mike Hanrohan is stymied by the fact that his younger brother Denny has joined Barstow's gang. Things get worse after a bloody shootout, in which Mike apparently guns down his own brother.
A Canadian sailor becomes a fugitive for love after a night with a woman in Marseille.
Accused of killing her employer, financier Bjorn Faulkner, Kit is championed by wisecracking sailor-on-leave Steve Van Ruyle, who has a vested interest in the outcome of the trial.
Spoiled child Geoffrey Bramer teams up with a pair of small time crooks to pose as an aristocrat and steal jewelry from exclusive shops. During a a caper, Geoffrey is caught and is sentenced to a reformatory where young men are trained to be sailors. He is befriended by model in-mate Terry O'Mulvaney but soon starts to get them both in trouble.
In a warehouse area at night, a drunk chief engineer is stabbed to death by someone who whistles. After the break of dawn, two seamen join the crew of a rusty cargo ship Kaiyo Maru. One is a troublemaker with bad attitudes, Senkichi Nomura, who pursues an enemy in order to take revenge for his father's death. The other is Keizo Sasaki, a buff, eagle-eyed man on board for a certain mission.
Helen Roberts, who's on probation, goes back to work as a waitress at Torre's Fish Palace, a San Francisco waterfront dive. The customers are low characters trying to make time with Helen and ex-rum runners trying to make a dishonest dollar. Some of the latter, including Helen's unwelcome suitor Martin Rhodes, are after a mysterious, valuable hidden "cargo"; when violence erupts, Helen finds herself innocently involved, and is soon on the run from both cops and crooks.
Sailor Joe Hart, who is spending his shore leave at a gambling joint, sells his gun to young Laurie Roberts after losing terribly. After Hart again loses his last dime, he leaves the joint and steals a car in order to return to his ship. Later that night, a tough gambler named "The Weasel" convinces Laurie, who also lost badly, that Baldy, the joint's owner, is crooked, and they both return to the joint to break open the safe. During the holdup, The Weasel kills Baldy with Joe's gun and, after being picked up for speeding, Joe is arrested for murder.
The son of a miller, following his call, flees to the sea, but after several years he returns to his family and to his childhood romance, Hanka.
Ramón Sampedro is a ship mechanic and part-time poet left a quadriplegic following a diving accident. Ramón fought for 30 years for the legal right to end his own life. He develops close relationships with his long-term lawyer Julia and his friend Rosa, who tries to convince him that his life is worth living. Despite his situation, Ramón manages to inspire those around him to live life to the fullest.
Marudhu, a sailor, falls in love with Nancy, a fruit vendor. However, she waits for the captain who had promised that he would return and marry her.
A Navy boxer (Jack Oakie) meets a dance-hall hostess (Vivienne Osborne) who tries to sober him up for a fight.
On shore leave, a young sailor meets and falls in love with a pretty young blonde. He goes home with her to meet her parents, but they don't approve of him at all. Their daughter takes offense at this, and in the ensuing argument she storms out of the house determined to live on her own.