Lifeboat 1944

In a lifeboat during World War II, survivors from the freighter torpedoed by a U-boat huddle together including columnist Constance Porter, the ship's engineer Kovac, radio operator Stanley Garrett, nurse Alice MacKenzie, millionaire Charles 'Ritt' Rittenouse, seaman Gus Smith, steward Joe, and Mrs. Higley, a hysterical Englishwoman holding her dead baby. After the baby is buried at sea, the mother drowns herself. Though the inhabitants of the lifeboat come from vastly different backgrounds, they quickly set aside the social and economic differences that divide them in a united effort to survive. A German seaman Willy is picked up out of the sea and Constane interprets for him. Willi suggests in German the direction toward Bermuda. During a crisis, he shouts at them in English. He was the U-boat commander. Willi has a compass and is strong enough to row them to a German supply ship The others allow him to take command of the boat, their only hope of survival is to be rescued by a German supply ship, which will presumably take them straight to a concentration camp.

In the Atlantic during WWII, a ship and a German U-boat are involved in a battle and both are sunk. The survivors from the ship gather in one of the boats. They are from a variety of backgrounds: an international journalist, a rich businessman, the radio operator, a nurse, a steward, a sailor and an engineer with communist tendencies. Trouble starts when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be from the U-boat.