The bottomless depths.
Ever think about the teeming economy of the soil beneath every street? Maggots in the murk? The indivisible terms of death, the contract spelled out before you could even spell in tongues of a foreign power? Dead languages lost to the world? Late night frowning men and women at consoles wetting their lips in worried thought?
They work for NORAD or vague oceanographic concerns tasked with providing, via radar or some other defunct 1980s mode of communication, real-time weather reports to off-shore oil-drilling platforms. One such platform went belly up (to starboard or port, I couldn’t say, I’m no sailor…neither in dead calm water or hurricane waves like wet mountains looming) in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the 1980s and everybody died, a bunch of Canadians, a few Americans, and one Englishman (“but he himself has said it/and it’s clearly to his credit/that he is an English man…he remains an E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eng-LISHHHH maaaaaaaaaan!”). Ocean Ranger was a semi-submersible platform that somehow stayed afloat on two pontoons that rested seventy feet below the waterline – I’m no engineer but how does something that’s supposed to float do so by depending on a submerged section of the structure?
Ocean Ranger was drilling in the Hibernia Oil Field 200 miles off the coast of Newfoundland on February 15 1982 when it sent out, at 12:45AM a doom-laden mayday call. According to two other platforms in the area, Sedco 706 (just 8 miles away) and Zapata Ugland (19 miles away) this was the very first indication that anything was the matter on Ocean Ranger:
Mobil On-Shore Radio Operator: Sir, Mobil Radio calling
Mobil On-Shore Superintendent: (lazily, a tad groggily) Yeah?
Mobil On-Shore Radio Operator: Got an emergency on the Ocean Ranger…
Mobil On-Shore Superintendent: (sounding more awake now) Yeah…?
Mobil On-Shore Radio Operator: Just a second…(rustling, random static) Ocean Ranger, Jack, are you there?
Ocean Ranger Foreman: Uhh roger
Mobil On-Shore Radio Operator: Can you give us anything else on it right now?
Ocean Ranger Foreman: Um uh…we’re listing badly and we need to get the people off the rig and that’s about it. Uh…we may not be able to hold the rig. The rig might be going over. Yeah they’re blowing about 70 to 80 or 75 to 85 miles an hour and we need to get the people off the rig…
01:04AM: Crucially, none of the above communication occurred on open two-way radio channels but via a satellite phone. Therefore, none of the other vessels in the area understood at this time that the Ocean Ranger was in an emergency situation. When Ocean Ranger contacted its support ship the Seaforth Highlander at 1:04AM requesting it “come to a close standby,” this was the first time anyone on the ship learned that anything was amiss on the Ocean Ranger. Surprised, the personnel on the Highlander asked what the matter was. Somewhat reluctantly, the answering party on Ocean Ranger said: I am requesting to tell you that we are listing badly.
01:09AM: A man in Connecticut who just happened to be near his Merisat machine received the following unaddressed Telex message - a message that still did not relay the emergency because it failed to write “MAYDAY”:
ARE EXPERIENCING A SEVERE LIST UNABLE TO CORRECT PROBLEM. NOTIFYING YOU PF [sic, likely meant “OF”] PROBLEM PLEASE QSL [QSL means “please confirm.”] WE ARE THE ODECO OCEAN RANGER LOC 46.43.33N 48.50.13W AND ARE EXPERIENCING A SEVERE LIST OF ABOUT 10-15 DEGREES AND PREGRESSING [sic, meant “PROGRESSING”]. REQUEST ASST ASAP.
The man in Connecticut immediately sent this Telx to the U.S. Coast Guard, but because the communication was missing the crucial “MAYDAY” designation, rescue personnel were not immediately deployed.
01:30AM local time: Ocean Ranger transmits its last message: “There will be no further radio communications from Ocean Ranger. We are going to lifeboat stations.”
The Seaforth Highlander was still seven miles away from the now–severely listing platform. With winds at 80 miles an hour, waves would have been crashing over the entire superstructure, making lifeboat stations difficult, if not impossible, to navigate. The bow lifeboats would have been underwater or destroyed. The stern lifeboats were sitting so high above the waterline that the drop would have been dangerous, if not deadly. It was only then, with the structure moments from sinking, that the crew realized they had no usable lifeboats, which is why rescue vessels did not know to search for loose people in the water instead of the bright white or orange lifeboats. Ocean Ranger was not equipped with survival suits, which would have been essential for the survival of the crew in waters that cold (25 degrees Fahrenheit, -3 degrees Celsius). Even just the mist and spray from the violently frothing waters would have chilled the crew to the bone, and this is before they dared to enter the unfathomably freezing water. Hypothermia would have set in after seconds.
Not surprisingly, when rescue vessels finally did reach the area, under conditions of very low visibility, they saw no hands in the water. Only one lifeboat was spotted, ominously empty of people. They’d all been washed overboard, into the cruel cruel sea, with nothing but those bright orange lifejackets to keep them above water. Those who didn’t drown died of hypothermia.
There we no survivors. Zero.
Of the nearly 90 men who went into the North Atlantic that night, only 22 bodies were ever found. Despite the fact that Ocean Ranger had a support vessel, the Seaforth Highlander, docked just 6 miles away, the ship was apparently unequipped to rescue personnel from the open ocean. One can’t help but wonder just what the hell the ship was equipped for, then, if not to render assistance in such emergencies. Did Mobil use the big boat as a larder? To store coffee? You’re 200 miles from land. How do you not have your rescue vessel equipped to pick people up from lifeboats?
Idiocy abounded elsewhere in the icy Atlantic. Despite the fact that Newfoundland’s Oceans Research and Development Corporation (NORDCO) had warned Mobil, and all other rigs and ships in the area, of a severe storm, all vessels seemingly underestimated its strength. The very same storm that sunk Ocean Ranger struck the Soviet container ship Mekhanik Tarasov in open ocean the following afternoon, approximately 65 miles (105 km) to the east. Containers shifted in the heavy seas and punctured a ballast tank, causing the ship to list 30 degrees. Despite the availability of nearby assistance, the Russian captain inexplicably refused to abandon ship, even declining assistance later in the evening from the Faroese long liner Sigurfari. His indecision, or perhaps just sheer callousness, resulted in the loss of 32 of 37 crew members when the Soviet freighter finally slipped beneath the water almost exactly twenty-four hours after Ocean Ranger. With gallant effort the ship had crawled to within 240 miles of Newfoundland’s coastline, meaning it sank only 40 miles further out from where Ocean Ranger had gone under (this doesn’t mean Tarasov sank 40 miles from Ocean Ranger last known position, only that it sank 240 miles from land, while the oil rig was 200. Either way, that’s a very long way from home, especially battling hurricane force winds and waves. Sigurfari only managed to save five sopping wet Soviets from the deadly sea that night. Of Ocean Ranger’s crew, not one man lived to see land again.)
Despite the hasty call to abandon ship, Ocean Ranger remained upright for an hour and a half after its crew abandoned it, more than enough time to allow emergency helicopters, or at least the Seaforth Highlander, even if ill equipped, to arrive.
02:11AM: The Seaforth Highlander arrives on scene after making visual contact with Ocean Ranger about half a mile away. Personnel on-ship spot white beacon lights floating on the starboard side of the still-above-water semi-submersible. But when the ship moves to where those lights are emanating from, it finds them to be attached to a series of life preservers floating empty on the violently thrashing sea.
02:14AM: A flare shoots into the sky. It’s on the starboard side of the Seaforth Highlander. The ship moves toward the arc of light.
02:21AM: Another flare shoots into the sky from roughly the same location. From about 1200 feet away, crew members on the Seaforth Highlander can see that the Ocean Ranger crew somehow got one of the stern lifeboats into the water. These lifeboats are like convertibles. They have a closed top. Four Highlander deckhands move onto the aft deck and make preparations to try and help the men in the lifeboat with whatever tools are at hand. The lifeboat, tantalizingly close now, showssigns of serious damage, with holes on both sides of its hull from stem to gunnel. The men aboard the Highlander can see men vigorously bailing water out of the stricken lifeboat while a single man in the aft hatch attempts to steer the vessel, which is somehow still moving under its own power.
Weather conditions have grown somehow worse, with waves reaching in excess of 60 feet and 60 to 70 knot winds sloshing freezing spray all over the four members of the Seaforth Highlander still standing, teeth chattering, on the aft deck. Captain Duncan bravely turns the Highlander stern first into the storm in order to approach the lifeboat without ramming it and to let the lifeboat drift towards them.
02:32AM: Captain Duncan finally has the lifeboat positioned on his port side, where he needs it in order to effect rescue. Deckhands are still able to see light and movement inside the lifeboat. Because of the deafening roar of the wind, the deckhands aboard Highlander cannot hear the men in the lifeboat, and vice versa. A rope is thrown down and the lone man in the aft deck of the lifeboat successfully catches it. He lashes it to the bigger ship, effectively coupling the lifeboat, with its exhausted contents, to its slippery steel side. Another rope with a life preserver tied to it is thrown down and caught. Someone inside the lifeboat uses this second rope to tie the boat more tightly to the ship. This may be a mistake. At this point, many of the men on the lifeboat believe they are home free. They begin to open up the hatches of the lifeboat. From above on the aft deck, the deckhands can see that many of them are still wearing their hardhats from the Ocean Ranger. Some are in work clothes, others are in pajamas. None are appropriately dressed for the severe conditions. Climbing out of the lifeboat, they gather and stand on the port side gunnel. This is their fatal error. If they had simply tried to exit the boat one at a time via a rope and life preserver, they probably would have lived. But the lifeboat begins to roll toward its port side, away from the supply ship, and in an instant capsizes, sending the men who’ve fought so valiantly to survive directly into the open ocean, just a mere twenty vertical feet away from the relative safety of the big ship’s deck where horrified deckhands watch helplessly. As an added insult, both ropes securing the lifeboat to the Highlander snap, rending the tenuous connection that may have saved those poor men’s lives. The deckhands do all they can, throwing scattered lines into the water and attempting to launch a lifeboat. But the ropes are covered in an instantly freezing fine mist, turning them into impossibly slippery snakes. Nobody can get a grip on them. And by the time the raft floats back toward the men, they are completely immobilized by hypothermia, unable to pull themselves back onto the lifeboat, never mind summon the Herculean strength necessary to pull themselves up onto the looming ship above. All the deckhands can do now is watch these men drown, one by one.
02:45AM: Supply ship Boltentor, which works alongside the Sedco 706, establishes visual contact with the maddeningly still above water Ocean Ranger but, like the Seaforth Highlander twenty-five minutes earlier, finds no survivors, not even frozen corpses. It’s as if some strange force, some unseen hand, has pulled the men under.
03:00AM: Captain Allingham, operating Nordertor, supply ship for the Zapata Ugland, has been watching the radar closely and sees that he has lost all radar contact with Ocean Ranger. Two small blips appear briefly at the rig’s last known position, flicker briefly, then flash out forever. These blips are presumed later to be the semi-submersible’s pontoons, dipping up above the waterline as the rig’s superstructure is pulled underwater, before following the rig on down 1500 feet to the bottom of the Atlantic. Mobil’s “unsinkable” rig has proved itself sinkable, “unsinkable” being the unfortunate, boastful and fate-tempting adjective given to a certain famous “unsinkable” ship that was also off the coast of Newfoundland (400 miles though, way out in Iceberg Alley), slipping unceremoniously into the cold North Atlantic in early hours of the morning. 2:20AM, they say, is the exact time the Titanic ceased to be a ship and became instead two things: 1. A shipwreck and 2. History.
Insanely, Captain Allingham’s information is not relayed to all vessels until 7:35AM, with the result that all rescue boats proceed under the assumption that Ocean Ranger is still afloat until 7:35AM, these same vessels heading to her last known location because they assume there are people there. So instead of heading to where the lifeboats are, rescue boats instead head to where Ocean Ranger once was, even though it isn’t.
For his part, Captain Duncan, who can do little other than watch helplessly as men flounder and drown, will say the following to the Royal Commission:
We were washing the bodies away with the motion of the ship, and for the rest of that morning we kept searching that area for any live personnel which might have been found. We saw many bodies in the water, bodies which obviously had not come from the lifeboat, but there were no signs of life at all.
U.S. Coast Guard and Halifax Maritime Rescue helicopters arrive around 4:15AM, far too late to save anybody, and acting only as extra eyes for the now coordinated support vessels. At 7AM, Nordertor, the most northern of these ships spots a lifeboat with a Seaforth Highlander life ring attached to it (presumably the lifeboat that came so tantalizingly close to rescue earlier at 2:30AM).
Captain Allingham spots roughly twenty lifeless bodies inside, meaning that some of the men who failed to get onto the Highlander somehow managed to claw their way back onto the lifeboat, only to freeze to death. Suddenly, several bodies gush out of a hole in the side of the lifeboat and wash over the Nordertor’s aft deck on a mammoth wave. One of these bodies, insanely, remains on the deck when the wave recedes, a lifeless frozen corpse. It is the only body this entire search and rescue operation is able to pluck from the unforgiving ocean while hope for survivors still remains. All subsequent 21 recoveries will be the result of these dour corpse-finding missions, not of rescue attempts.
But Ocean Ranger is not yet done taking lives: With the pontoons now sticking up toward the surface just 100 feet below the waterline, the Ocean Ranger is now considered a shipping hazard by the Canadian government. Two deep sea divers tasked with the operation to help tow the drowned submersible further out into open ocean die when a tank they are welding explodes. Another diver is killed when somebody on the surface drops something heavy into the water, which lands directly on the man’s head, crushing his skull and killing him instantly.
The platform is eventually towed and buried successfully out at sea. Ocean Ranger lies asleep on the bottom of the Atlantic. Below smile some of the souls that went down with it and sleep there forever, perhaps sharing what Pay Conroy in Beach Music calls “a house somewhere beneath the great bright sea.”