Boat 1513 tells the true story of 10-year-old Tuong Le’s perilous escape with his family from Vietnam to Hong Kong in August 1981. Their means of survival is a rickety fishing boat that is ill-equipped to survive on the treacherous South China Sea. Dangers threaten them almost from the first moment as a devastating storm takes the boat off course, turning the family’s expected five-day journey into a grueling four-week nightmare. Their worst fears come true when the paranoid captain of the boat threatens to shoot Tuong’s father for supposedly concealing water. Starving and dehydrated, the passengers spend many hours in the cramped storage compartment below the boat’s deck, nauseous from the putrid odors of fish and diesel fuel as they cling to the slimmest threads of hope.

Eventually, after many disasters, the boat is the 1,513th Vietnamese fishing boat to arrive in Hong Kong harbor, which gives the story its title. Life in the refugee camp in Hong Kong, however, brings its own set of challenges as the family must contend with crowded, unsanitary housing and gang violence. After seven months in limbo, the family is finally sponsored by a friend in America to settle in Dallas, Texas.