In 1973 the freighter Bulk Promotor is built by Norway to transport coal and iron ore throughout Northern Europe. In 1985 the ship is sold to mainland China. Renamed Hupohai, it is used to distribute coal along the Yangtze River. Thirty-two years old later, the vessel, now called the Hari Funafuti, sails from Singapore to Bangladesh to be gutted and dismantled for scrap. "Scrap Vessel" documents this last trip of the Hari Funafuti. Byrne, along with fellow cameraman Theron Patterson, explore the soon-to-be-ghost ship from stem to stern. With a languid atmosphere. using the massive ship like a landscape, the film explores what is found inside the ship from its communist past, onwards through an unseen attack by pirates and onto a distant beach and glowing iron foundry, until the ship becomes a phantom.