A dying French naval frigate captain tries to make a last rendezvous in the winter storm-tossed seas off the Grand Banks, with "le crabe tambour," a French war hero he had betrayed twenty years earlier. "Le crabe tambour" "the drummer crab" was a boyhood nickname for the handsome young Alsatian whom the film depicts proving his courage, first in the war in French Indochina, and then again in the "Generals' Revolt" in Algeria. Courtmartialed because friends like the French naval captain were afraid to risk their own careers by testifying for him, the exiled "crabe tambour" and his trawler, The Shamrock, is now a legend among the Grand Banks fishermen.