During autumn of 1944, an RAF Hudson carrying a VIP passenger in possession of highly secret information is shot down and ditches in the North Sea. Fighting the elements and trying to keep up morale, the occupants of the aircraft’s dinghy talk about their lives awaiting the rescue they hope will come. The film’s title reflects the motto of the RAF’s Air Sea Rescue Service, one of whose high speed launches battles against its own mechanical problems, enemy action, time and the weather to locate and rescue the downed crew and the vital secret papers they carry.

Henry Graham is a man with a problem: he has run through his entire inheritance, and is completely unequipped to provide for himself. His childhood guardian, Uncle Harry (a deliciously mean-spirited James Coco), refuses to give him a dime, and Henry, completely unwilling to exercise the only solution he sees–suicide– devises a plan with the help of his imaginative butler: he can make money the old-fashioned way–he can marry it. With a temporary loan from Uncle Harry to tide him over, Henry has six weeks to find a bride, marry her, and repay the money, or else he must forfeit all his property to his uncle. With only days remaining, Henry meets clumsy, painfully shy heiress Henrietta Lowell (played by director Elaine May). She’s the answer to his prayers–if only Henry can overcome the obstacles placed in his path by Uncle Harry, Henrietta’s lawyer, and Henry’s own reluctance to wed.

Abner Hale, a rigid and humorless New England missionary, marries the beautiful Jerusha Bromley and takes her to the exotic island kingdom of Hawaii, intent on converting the natives. But the clash between the two cultures is too great and instead of understanding there comes tragedy.