Traveling steerage from Queenstown to New York, an Irish family—Eileen and Frank Maguire and their 3-year-old son Tom—are woken by the jolt of the collision. Eileen survives, but in scenes of terrifying confusion, her husband and child do not. On the rescue ship Carpathia, wishing she had drowned and not entirely sane, Eileen spots Bruce Joseph Ismay, director of the White Star Line, alive and well. What right does he have to live when her family has perished? It is then that Eileen sets out to kill him.