From April 1795 to September 1801, Daude and Bouille, two mortuary-attendants of the Basse-Géole de la Seine in Paris were given temporary custody of some four hundred bodies whom death had claimed violently. Some perhaps had been murdered, some had met tragic accidents, many had committed suicide, all died within sight or smell of the Seine and over half of them had been fished from the river. The film is a thesis on death by drowning - and most especially death by drowning at a time when the world was undergoing such dramatic, violent and irrevocable changes.