Ocean Ranger
The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform, thought to be unsinkable, that went down 315 kilometers (175 nautical miles) from St. Johns, off the coast of Newfoundland on February 14, 1982 with 84 men aboard. There were no survivors.The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi submersible offshore exploration oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Japan it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland and in November 1980 the Grand Banks. Because of her massive size she was able to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs. Considered unsinkable training of the crews on board was insufficient at best. She was the Titanic of the offshore oil industry.
On Sunday, February 14th, a vicious unexpected winter storm with 100 mph winds and 60 foot swells developed south of Newfoundland and headed for the Grand Banks. At around 7pm, with seas over 100feet high, the main deck of the Ocean Ranger reported to the mobile shore base in St. JohnÃÂs that they were hit by an especially huge wave and they would attempt to separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could bring up the drill. This was only done once or twice before. They did not succeed. Sometime after 7pm the Ocean Ranger reported that another giant wave crashed over the rig smashing thru a ballast control room porthole only 30 feet above the water line that did not have its steel storm plate installed. Water rushed in soaking the control panel and shorting out its analogue relays causing the rig to list to about 10 degrees. They removed the relays and rinsed them in clean water to get the salt out of them and dried them with a hairdryer. When they reinstalled the relays and turned on the power the control panel was still to wet and shorted out again. They then attempted to manually start the pumps but inadvertently pumped more water into the ballast tanks causing the rig to list to about 15 degrees. Its fate was sealed. At 1:30 am, the Ocean Ranger radioed it was abandoning ship.
Due to being thought unsinkable safety drills had been haphazard, so that during the evacuation attempt many did not even make it into the lifeboats, instead jumping over the side into the cold waters of the Atlantic to perish within minutes. Rescue attempts by helicopter and the supply ship Seaforth Highlander were hampered by weather and cold water conditions. Those in the lifeboat caps sized it when they all stood on one side of it as they tried to climb a rescue line thrown to them from the supply ship. The Seaforth Highlander then launched its own large inflatable life raft but it floated away just out of reach of the freezing and drowning men. The men on the supply ship then used long poles with hooks on the ends to try to catch on to someone but to no avail. Everyone perished. At 3:38 a.m February 15th, the Ocean Ranger over ballasting to one side, capsized and sank to the ocean floor.
Over the next week 22 bodies were recovered, most without a mark having died in the cold water for lack of survival suits. Autopsies showed those men had drowned.
A Canadian Royal Commission spent two years looking into the disaster. It concluded the Ocean Ranger had design and construction flaws, particularly in the ballast control room, and that the crew lacked proper safety training survival suits and equipment.
It also concluded that inspection and regulation by U.S. and Canadian government agencies was ineffective.
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