A through-the-years story with songs and sentiments. A sailor rises from first officer to captain, gets married and has a son, but loses his command when his ship is rammed and the vessel is abandoned to save passengers. For years he lives in the countryside. Then his son, now grown, contacts his father's old shipmates and eventually their ship is put back into commission with its old skipper in command.
Although Larry "Buster" Crabbe earns top billing, the hero of Drift Fence is former Western star Tom Keene as Jim Travis, who, at a rodeo, meets city dweller Jim Traft, who has come west to erect a fence that will prevent Clay Jackson from continuing his cattle rustling business.
Joyce Reid, a wealthy young debutante, stows away on a cargo ship to China, carrying as passengers her dashing aviator sweetheart, Dan Bailey and and her munitions-producing father, E.
A newly hired police chief vows to clean up a notoriously corrupt police department. When he is murdered, investigators find that there is no shortage of suspects, most of them being fellow cops.
Peyton Wells (Ben Lyon) rescues Judy Jones (Joan Marsh) from a very dull young man, at a sedate party given for her by her multi-millionaire grandfather Silas P.
Carrie Snyder is a prostitute, who is forced out of the fictional southern town of Crebillon, after forming a friendship with a young boy named Paul, whose dying mother is unable to protest against her son visiting such a woman.