A prologue introduces us to the restless young Gideon (Collin Kelly-Sordelet), who yearns to escape the town where he’s grown up, and where his forebears have always worked the shipyards. Even after an injury at the yards leaves his father, Joe (Jamie Jackson), unable to work, the pugnacious Gideon rebels against the life ordained for him. “His life may be over,” he tells his girlfriend, Meg (Dawn Cantwell), “but mine’s not.” Although she refuses to join him, Gideon sets out “to find us a berth at the end of the earth,” as he sings, and promises to return to rescue her.

Youthful dreams have a way of evaporating when they meet the hard exigencies of life, and when Gideon returns 15 years later (Michael Esper plays the adult Gideon, Rachel Tucker the adult Meg), he finds that the town has sunk into economic depression, the shipyards have closed and Meg has moved on. Her almost-fiancé is Arthur Millburn (the excellent Aaron Lazar, making the most of his gentle love ballad), who, in alliance with a local businessman, urges the unemployed workers to take the only jobs on offer: at a new salvage company.