Sealed Cargo 2015

In 1943, against the backdrop of the brutal Battle of the Atlantic, a weathered fishing trawler named Daniel Webster returns to its home port of Gloucester, Massachusetts, bearing the day’s catch and the quiet weight of a mission that could alter the fates of those aboard. With the war’s reach extending to every seam of the sea, the captain reluctantly agrees to ferry Margaret McLean to Trabo, a small Newfoundland community. Short-handed and wary, he hires a Danish sailor named Konrad, and the vessel sets a course for the Grand Banks fishing grounds, where the sea keeps its own counsel and danger often comes riding the fog.

As the voyage unfolds, tension threads its way through the deck. Holger, another Dane among the crew, reports that radio communications have been sabotaged, a chilling reminder that enemies may be closer than the horizon suggests. The captain, who knows most of his crew by face and temperament, grows wary of the two newcomers and of the woman traveling with them, suspecting that one of them—perhaps even the passenger herself—could be a German agent. The quiet suspicion hangs in the air like brine and fog, shaping every decision and every glance.

Night falls in a sea of heavy fog, and the ship hears distant gunfire that shatters the stillness. They row toward the source, seeking survivors, and what they find is a Danish square-rigged ship, Den Magre Kvinde, badly damaged as if struck by a storm and then shelled. Its captain, Skalder, is found aboard with a single dead body and a story that strains the limits of plausibility: his crew abandoned ship in a storm, and he was attacked by a U-boat. The Daniel Webster tows the stricken vessel toward Trabo, a fragile lifeline between suspicion and aid.

Konrad’s keen instincts gnaw at him. He notes that the German gunfire seems misdirected, hitting above the waterline rather than aiming to sink, and the tarpaulin covering a boat is riddled with bullet holes while the boat itself remains undamaged. These details whisper that something is terribly off. The two sailors slip below deck to search the hold, where a dangerous truth lurks. When they reunite, Konrad hands over a pistol to the captain to prove where loyalties lie. Their search uncovers a second, hidden hold packed with torpedoes—the Kvinde is a covert tender resupplying the notorious U-boat wolfpacks. They watch in silence as Holger slips into the hold and uses a radio to signal the Germans, a revelation that could tilt the balance of trust and danger.

Before they can alert the authorities, Skalder’s crew arrives, and the two Danes pretend they know nothing. Skalder’s plan becomes clear: he intends to use Trabo as a staging point to resupply U-boats. A Canadian flying boat lands in the harbor and an officer scrutinizes Skalder’s papers. Finding nothing amiss, the officer informs Skalder that a corvette will inspect his cargo the following day. The captain proposes a calculated gambit: he offers to leave one of his two Danish crewmen as a witness, hoping to dispossess the spy Holger without raising suspicion.

Departing the harbor, the captain—now out of sight from the others—signals the decision: one man remains aboard to relay to the nearest radio station, while the rest withdraw to the safety of the lifeboats and the shore. A night ambush is set. When the Germans come ashore to seize the villagers, the attackers strike decisively, wiping out the intruders and throwing the plan into disarray. The Kvinde is set ablaze under the cover of darkness; in the ensuing chaos, the captain and his men board the burning vessel, overpower or eliminate the crew, and rescue Margaret, who had been held as a hostage.

Skalder insists that he has set the ship to explode in twenty minutes, a claim the captain does not believe. Yet he chooses to take the Kvinde farther out to sea, aiming to destroy it away from the village. They rig torpedoes so they can trigger a controlled explosion away from the people they’ve sworn to protect. The Kvinde is approached by two U-boats that come seeking supplies, and Skalder wields a gun, wounding a guard as Konrad is killed in the exchange. A third U-boat surfaces, and the captain, together with another crewman, helps Konrad into a boat and they row away under German gunfire. When the ship finally detonates, the resulting wave swamps the submarines, turning a desperate ruse into a decisive sink. The sea, at once hostile and protective, keeps its own counsel as the danger passes and the survivors sail toward an uncertain horizon.