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Chapter One

THE DIVERS

Many books and articles have been written about that near God forsaken piece of the North Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea. It lies to the east of the British Isles and its eastern boundaries from north to south are the coasts of Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium.

A brief return journey north through this valuable piece of marine real estate takes us from the bottle-neck of the Dover Straits in the south, up through the rich gas fields of the Leman Bank off Bacton in Norfolk, stretching on up to fields off Teeside, and continuing on up through a vast sea of empty space before reaching the great Forties Field off Aberdeen and Peterhead. Its multitude of neighbouring fields, from Clyde in the south to Harding to the north, can be clearly seen on a fine day with their oil and gas platforms standing starkly against the iron grey daylight sky, or the flickering candle-like gas flares turning night skies into day.

On then past Orkney and the huge Frigg gas field and its smaller satellites, and ever further north to the East Shetland Basin and its huge conglomerate of gas and oilfields. And venturing yet further north beyond these where within the exceedingly hostile environment of the northern North Sea lies the Magnus oil field, and the ocean begins to widen eastwards to meet with the extensive expanse of the Norwegian Sea, reaching on up to the Arctic Circle where, commencing in November each year, the days will turn slowly into one long night for the full three months duration of the dark Arctic winter.

To the west of Shetland in the Faroes/Shetland Trough lie the Foinaven and Schiehallion fields in the UK’s deepest exploited water to date, with the Clair oilfield, the largest undeveloped field in the North Sea, seemingly acting as buffer between them and Shetland.

The North Sea is a huge expanse of deep, cold, and often stormy water extending to more than half a million square kilometres (over 200,000 square miles) and over 650 metres (2,100 feet) at its deepest, where fierce winter gales create mountainous, foaming and ever changing grey green to black, white topped seas, and where man, both above and below the water, goes precariously about the business of searching for and extracting the hydrocarbons which were formed millions of years ago far beneath the seabed of those icy waters, and which have been so vitally important to the United Kingdom of Great Britain’s energy needs for our light, heat, and mobility over the last twenty five years, with the oil alone accounting for around one third of our energy consumption.

Though we occasionally hear or read something of the durable, tenacious and resilient people who are gainfully employed in these waters, and diving films and books by the hundred on clear blue still water, coral reefs and multi-coloured fish are much in abundance, let us stop for a moment and consider the commercial realities rather than the leisure and recreational side of underwater life where, to my knowledge, nothing in detail has been written about the men who went to work beneath those dark, cold, and fast running deep waters, and lost their lives whilst doing so.

The North Sea has been the United Kingdom’s point of focus for oil and gas exploration and production since the mid 1960’s, and the list of known diving fatalities in oil and gas operations in Northern Europe from that time to the end of the 20th century has been a most shocking 58 divers of various nationalities - all in the North Sea but for a few exceptions, and the majority of them British; but also Norwegian, American, French, Dutch and Italian.

Brave, perceptive and resourceful men, and vitally important, indeed essential, to the success of the construction and ongoing maintenance of oil and gas installations, and the subsequent extraction of their products which vastly benefit the UK economy and the country’s export figures as a whole.

Leading precarious offshore lives aboard “petrol factories” and facing possible death on a daily basis, strong minded and individualistic, they generally worked as a single man unit underwater, but came together in a team when required in a way most people requiring team spirit amongst their employees would envy. These were men who were exceedingly optimistic about their lives, who thought their futures were assured, and all of whom challenged those underwater conditions for their livelihoods, only to lose those lives in the prime of their existence.

As in war they were basically young men, most all with wives, children and girlfriends, and most certainly families, friends and relatives. Men whom I hope to ensure will never be forgotten for what they accomplished, the legacy they left us, and the fact that they were so very colourful, so much larger than life and, some of them, my friends and colleagues.

That exceedingly courageous, resolute, good humoured, and somewhat eccentric mixed bunch of often totally outrageous characters, professional divers, are drawn from all classes of society and all quarters of the globe and, perhaps unusually, many of them from all kinds of previous different professions who, for reasons best known to themselves, decided to make diving their newly chosen vocation. Not entirely rejecting their former way of life, but seeking out those companies the length and breadth of the world who would pay them well to utilise their hard-earned skills and experience, sometimes in foreign oil and gas fields, but most certainly in our own, to fulfil our nation’s increasing reliance on the products of those skills. Seamen, airmen, soldiers, coal miners, accountants, building workers, university graduates, shop assistants, naval and army officers, or farm-workers; it seems to matter not in the least in the initiative these men have taken to improve their lifestyle by investing in their futures. To earn more money, of course, but sometimes just as importantly to do something they consider rather more worthwhile and considerably more interesting than that in which they were perhaps previously gainfully employed.

Select numbers of divers end up in the oilfield business because it is, without doubt, a very serious business but a great and fascinating adventure too. To be a vital part of the exploration for, or production of, oil and gas in what must surely be, more often than not, one of the most interesting jobs in the world can be nothing short of a huge bonus in a profession dearly loved, with a passion that people who dislike or are indifferent towards the water would find exceedingly hard to understand.

Not exactly on a par with astronauts walking on the moon, or changing out a computer on the Hubble Telescope, but nevertheless, when major goals are achieved, it often seems just as fantastic, considering that the underwater world is still almost as totally alien to man as it was a million years ago, even though our seas cover about seventy percent of the earth’s surface.

I can well remember diving in an attempt to stab the then world’s largest oil pipeline riser (the pipe which brings oil up from the seabed) of 142 centimetres (56 inches) in diameter, and weighing around 120 tonnes, into the ‘tube turn’ (the bend as the pipeline turns up from the seabed to rise up a platform) of a pipeline at the base of a platform on Kharg Island in Iran. It was only in about twenty eight metres (ninety feet) of water but dangling precariously on the end of a crane wire, so when it finally went in and lined up, after many round the clock previous attempts by the whole diving team, it was like all your Christmas’s had come on the same day.

In the very early days of North Sea operations many divers were drawn from their respective native shores of the two most productive countries bordering the North Sea - Britain and Norway. But others arrived in our prospective and budding gas and oilfields on rigs, boats, helicopters, and offshore barges, from countries as diverse as Germany, Holland, Italy and France, to South and East Africa and Australia. And not a few from the United States of America, and other Mediterranean island countries too, such as Malta, Greece and Cyprus, to mention just some of the cosmopolitan mix of nationalities, some of which to this day, as in many other oilfield skills, blend seamlessly within the three percent of non-European Union nationals employed throughout the offshore industry, who are gladly absorbed within the industry as a whole for their welcome and valued skills.

Though generally on good terms with what they do, divers have their good and bad days like anyone else, but are rarely heard to state that they would rather be doing something different, notwithstanding all the hardships and dangers they are often called upon to endure. Money aside, in the final analysis they still very much like the job they are doing, and great confidence in their own abilities is one of their major assets, whether that be applied to the physical side of diving, the profession as a whole, or to any other aspect of their lives.

Most all, and quite naturally so, would readily agree that the money they can earn is the primary incentive and, if successfully trained at one of the schools for professional divers, or leaving the Armed Forces as a trained diver and getting offshore certification, will attempt to enter the oil-field business at the very first opportunity, as that is where the big money is.

Some will be disappointed as it is not a situation one can just walk into. It’s a bit of a ‘Catch 22’ situation where, even with the appropriate training and certification, hands-on previous experience can sometimes be the order of the day and, without that experience, jobs can still be hard to come by unless, of course, you have proven ability - perhaps a good spell in civil engineering or dockyard diving - and strong powers of persuasion.

No matter what profession a person is considering entering, and diving is no different, actually getting a job with a diving company depends a great deal on the applicant’s ability to interest a prospective employer in his previous experience and the qualifications that he has obtained. He would have to prove his ability enough to persuade that employer that he will be a reliable employee, fit and able to undertake any reasonably required task, be a credit and an asset to the company, and be amenable to the employers’ required working routine. He will also have to assure the employer of his availability for work at a moment’s notice, a great deal of which will be unsocial hours, and will include days such as Christmas and other Bank Holidays, and possibly include much time away from home, perhaps for weeks or even months at a time. He will, of course, subsequently need to prove that he can work as a cohesive member of a team. Although the average professional diver is something of a special individual, there is no place for individuals in the context of the kind of teamwork required in the diving business.

Without doubt the UK offers some of the best, if not the best, commercial diver training in the world; some training companies having many years of experience, and with the most recognised qualifications in the field of Commercial Diving to be obtained anywhere. At first glance the cost of the various courses may seem prohibitive but when you consider what you get for your money, and how quickly you can earn it back again at a basic

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