One name strikes fear among Spanish ship captains plying the coastal Caribbean waters of the Spanish Main: Barracuda, the notorious scourge of the seas. Yet it was not always so...

Paul Henreid stars in a change-of-pace role as Capt. Laurent Van Horn, a Dutch trader in the Caribbean who is wrongly imprisoned by the Spanish governor (Walter Slezak) and sentenced to hang for trespassing. But Van Horn stages a breakout with other unjustly incarcerated prisoners, resurfacing as the rakish Barracuda to command the pirate waterways, rescue fair Francesca (Maureen O'Hara) from marriage to the governor and avenge the wrongs done to him.