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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

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