The powerful German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was stalked and engaged on 26 December 1943 by a superior Allied naval task force off the North Cape of Norway. In pitch darkness and mountainous seas, British warships, led by HMS Duke of York and HMS Belfast, engaged the Scharnhorst in a clash of the titans that saw the pride of the German Navy sent to the bottom of the Barents Sea. Of the 1,972 men on board, only 36 were saved. It was the last battle to be fought in the Atlantic between capital ships.

In 2000, the Norwegian writer and investigative journalist Alf R. Jacobsen led the expedition that found and filmed the wreck of the Scharnhorst, 300 metres down in the freezing ocean inside the Arctic Circle. In Scharnhorst, he brings together the compelling story of this important naval engagement and his personal account of how he finally succeeded in locating and filming the wreck of the ill-fated battlecruiser.