With his marriage floundering, Owen Roberts gets involved with a female student at the university where he is a lecturer. An accusation of gross misconduct ensues, and now he stands to lose everything. While clearing out the attic, a diary Owen kept in 1967 comes to light. It records his voyage aboard the Merchant Navy ship Albatross. He had confined the diary and the traumatic memories to the dust and darkness of the attic many years before. Reliving that time as a deck boy nearly forty years before comforts him. It gives him temporary relief from his present situation, which is just as violent. Only in a different way. But can he survive the present storm?