Carroll Fleming

James Rallston, facing financial hardship, marries a wealthy invalid widow with a daughter, Jean, and plots to control her fortune. He orchestrates her confinement in a sanitarium by drugging her and falsely claiming she is insane, with the help of a conniving doctor and sanitarium keeper. Fifteen years later, Rallston has lost Jean's fortune through speculation and seeks help from John Bigelow to recover it, offering Jean as a reward. Bigelow, suspicious of Rallston, discovers the truth about the widow and Jean's father, and rescues the widow from the sanitarium.

1860 ushers in the era of iron ships, Richard Sibley, a builder of wooden ships, stubbornly resists the change, which leads him to forbid the marriage of his daughter Rose to John Rhead, a proponent of the new method. This injustice outrages John's sister Gertrude so much that she breaks off her engagement to Sibley's son Sam. Meanwhile, John and Rose elope.