Smit-Lloyd supply vessels

We had guys who pretended to be helpful and asked such victims: Do you know what really helps against sea sickness? Yes, they were very eager to know. You must tie a raw herring on a string, lower it down your throat and move it slowly up and down. And then the same moment they were gone…

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Your “all over the world” may be a bit limited??

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The North Sea offshore oil and gas boom started in the sixties. As at the start there was little knowledge in Europe about this new kind of business Americans, who had ample experience from drillings in the GOM, were called in to help out. It was a colorful lot with Texas drawls, enormous boots, hats and loud voices. They swaggered around the offices and in the mean time letting us know that we were a complete bunch of idiots and retards who would probably never learn this trade. They regarded the North Sea as a kind of pond or at best an inner sea. No, then the GOM, that was a different matter.

After a while we were sick and tired of their belittling attitude. Our chance came when four of them wanted to board the oilrig by boat, not by helicopter for a change. The rig was at about 150 miles from shore. The weather was not very good but we knew it would be worsening soon. We informed the captain of the Smit-Lloyd vessel and asked him to give them a ride for their money and it seemed he did. They had no idea about the some times filthy weather conditions in the North Sea, it can be a regular hell hole.

When they arrived at the platform they already were a broken lot. The weather was so bad that they could not be hoisted up to the platform either. At that location 12 meter waves were at times normal. Now they had to make the return trip also by boat! When they disembarked they looked like hell, the swagger was totally gone. Now they knew. Never underestimate the North Sea or she will take her revenge…

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They missed the Draupner freak wave which was with a maximum wave height of 25.6 metres. A normal wave breaks at the top, not this one it keeps climbing up and up.

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The famous Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) made a painting of The Great Wave off Kanagawa which looks exactly like the real wave.

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It was recreated by scientists by making two smaller wave groups that crossed at an angle of 120 degrees. It was found that it was possible to recreate the full scaled amplitude of the original Daupner measurement. The height of waves produced under these conditions is not limited by breaking in the same way.

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The old timers in the GOM (there are a few still around). When I returned to the oilfield in 2007 from the USCG, I ran into a few. Most had retired or moved to the office. I sailed with a couple while studying for my Master’s license.

They are shells of their former selves from my memories of them from the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Alcohol, drugs, weight gain, diabetes and hepatitis took their toll. I could still see the embers in their eyes flare when they discussed working the North Sea at the beginning.

From your memories and experiences, I understand you being proud of where safety has ended up. You have been blessed by not having to work in the grey area or when you started hearing circus music. I have seen that with SHELL, TRANSOCEAN, EXXONMOBIL, and most other big players. Now, think about working in our industry when profits and results become #1, safety a distance second, and those same loudmouth you dealt with in positions of real power.

BP talked a good game but I worked under DWH/Macondo before the “incident” and even the OSV guys knew that was an evil well. Long, late-night discussions with the crane operators did not give us the technical side, but we were not surprised when that well lashed out. It lowered my view of BP immensely.

I never worked the North Sea but have the ultimate respect for the people that have and made it work and made our industry safer or at least gave us the option.

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In the early 1970s Brown & Root took one of their lay barges (B 352 I believe) and a burying barge from GoM over to the North Sea to work on the Forties pipeline.
They also brought a couple of West India Line boats as pipe carriers:

I met one of the Captains that had been on the WIL boats in Japan in 1976 when loading heavy lifts on WIL boats for Saudi Aramco. He explained that the attitude was that; “the North Sea is not even as big as the GoM so what is the problem”?
When the first autumn storm rolled in off the Atlantic the B 352 was caught flat footed. The deck got washed bare of loose equipment, including life rafts. Even the crawler crane went overboard.

The first GoM drilling rig that was towed across to work in the North Sea was the “Mr. Cap” (Le Tourneau’s Blt. No. 3)
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She later came to S.E.Asia as R&B’s “Chris Segar” and worked for Brunei Shell.
The Superintendent for R&B had been on her in the North Sea as Driller when working in the Southern Gas fields. He told some stories.

In the beginning they used the same airgap as used in the GoM (35’)
When the first storm came along, the rig got lifted up and slammed back on the hard sand bottom, resulting in damages to the jacking system, jack towers and surrounding hull structure.

Thereafter they consulted Capt. David Noble to get a recommended airgap for the area of operation, which later became standard procedure.
He had advised on preparation for the tow from GoM to UK as a condition from Lloyds Insurance. (The first Warranty Survey carried out)

The Superintendent in Brunei had also been on board in Galveston at the time and was duly impressed with Capt. Noble. As he told it:
He came on board, walked around the rig, gave us a list of the things to be done and the number to his hotel and said; “When you are ready, call me. If you haven’t done it, don’t bother to call”.

The good ol’ boys appreciated tough talking. I know, I worked with many of them from when I first started as a Freelance Warranty Surveyor with NDA in 1974.

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These are the stories I like to hear.

What you describe is fully recognizable. We knew the local circumstances but they just wouldn’t listen to us. They always knew better, we were insignificant nitwits, what an arrogance. They had to find out the hard way and that often happened. Communication, because of that, was almost impossible which created dangerous situations.

Then there was the guys from the GOM who had seen the film “South Pacific “ and were all prepared to work in the Great Southern Basin south of New Zealand. The inhabitants of the port of Bluff had never seen such colourful shirts and after a very brief period would never see again.

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One of the most notorious regions for rogue or freak waves is the southern coast of South Africa where the five-knot west-going Agulhas Current meets strong westerlies from the Southern Ocean.

On 31 December 1970 the Smit-Lloyd 102 was on its way to Port Elisabeth with a load of casing (220 tons) when it was hit by two consecutive freak waves. During the night the weather deteriorated to force 9 - 10 and seas 20 - 30 feet, both from the west. These came in from behind and passed the ship. Quartering seas are notoriously dangerous especially for a ship with a ‘bathtub’ aft with a length of about 37 meters.

Around 06.30 a high sea, about 15 meters, came on deck, causing the ship to list heavily, followed very soon after by a second even higher one, on which the ship capsized and later sunk at position 34.07 East 24.09 West. The wheelhouse was forcibly torn from the ship! One of the sailors came to his senses in the water, luckily close to a dinghy he could climb into. Moments later, the helmsman was forcibly blown out of the ship and pulled into the dinghy by the sailor.

The two crew members managed to get free of the ship and were able to get to safety by means of a dinghy. With the help of a floating anchor they stayed at the location for 1 hour, then they were driven by the current to the rocky coast, which came into view after 12 hours. The last mile was done by swimming to a small stretch of beach near Humansdorp (Wreck point). The night was spent in a cabin, the next day they met vacationers who took the two men to hospital.

In fact this was the only major incident in all those years with the Smit-Lloyd ships that I know of. And that in a rough and dangerous working environment. It says something about the reliability and safety of these new type of vessels and of course the seamanship of the crews.

This safety record is remarkable if compared with the situation in the GOM where eight offshore supply vessels capsized and sank between 1956 and 1963. Interesting in this respect is this gCaptain thread. One of the causes of the losses was that the mud tank was mounted on the deck which caused loss of stability and capsizing. They were later mounted below decks.

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That’s not a good comparison. The offshore drilling in the '50s were moving from the swamp gradually moving offshore. 1963 deep water drilling was in 10 fathoms. The vessels and equipment had transitioned from supply barges and WW2 surplus vessels to mud boats of various configurations of 150 ft max.

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I don’t know if it was a Draupner freak wave, but in Nov. 1981 a storm blew up in the Northern North Sea and caused some monster waves.
I was Marine Advisor on the LB 200 at the time.
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The storm came out of the NE, which is very unusual, causing chaos all around the Northern North Sea. I can’t remember if it was the Hermod or Balder, but one of them broke moorings and came adrift that day a bit further south in the British sector

The McDermott owned LB200 was moored on the NE side of Statfjord B platform, acting as temporary Floatel during hook-up and commissioning with 550 people on board (500 Pax + 50 crew).The blue boxes were additional LQ on deck
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That position was chosen because storms usually came from the SW, or NW, thus she would drift away from the platform, not towards it

As the storm blew up worker on Statfjord B was called back, the telescopic gangway lifted and the LB 200 was warped 1000’ away from the platform.
All 14 anchors were out, tested and holding.

As the storm got stronger the assisting tug Maersk Ranger was hooked up, all pax living on deck was moved below and the Camp Boss ordered to serve food and run movies continuously to keep them happy.
Nobody allowed outside. You can see here why:
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When one of the upwind anchors start slipping we manned the Winch Control panels in the Control Tower with all available personnel to keep slacking and heaving in as required to keep more anchors from slipping.

It got a bit rough. The wave rider buoy recorded 23.6 m. max wave and the last info from the standby boat was 120 kts. at his level (Before the anemometer blew out of his mast)

I reported the situation to Mobil in Bergen.They asked if they should get helicopters standing by at Flesland in case we needed to evacuate unnecessary personnel. I told them that everybody was safe and calm and that we had the situation under control. If the radio news reported that preparations were ongoing for evacuation “I would have 500 panicked people on my hand and they would have twice that of panicked relatives ashore, so leave it alone”.

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Caught in the act!? This looks suspiciously like the freak wave generated in the test basin.

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3 posts were split to a new topic: Rouge Waves

One of the company’s ships that I worked for, built in Bremer Vulcan was in the same storm. She was on her maiden round voyage and the guys onboard said the conditions were horrific.

Funny this topic should come up. I have been watching salvage videos on Youtube. These people have extraordinary courage.

Some of the most interesting work I have done in my career is salvage work. It has been a few years since I handled one, though.

I concur. Not one is the same that’s what makes it so interesting. Always thinking about new solutions to tackle a problem. And when successful there is the satisfaction afterwards. Addictive work environment.

Likewise. I had a few jobs as Salvage Surveyor and as Salvage Master back in the 1990s.
The last job requires you to be tough as nail, which I found out I’m not, i found out when I did a salvage job on a small container feeder that had run on a sand bank just a few cables from Pasir Panjang Container Terminal in Singapore.
I came out with two tugs, ready to use brute force to pull the ship free, “no matter what”.
I talked to the Danish Master who was a year from retirement and had never had an accident before. He felt very bad for having gone on the wrong side of a channel marker when leaving the wharf. (He had Pilot exemption)
He explained that he had been supervising discharging and loading since he had an inexperienced Ch.Officer and had not had any real rest or sleep for 36 hrs.(Totally against the rules, I know)

I checked the depth around the ship and sounded all tanks and found that she would be easy to pull off on the next HW. In this case I felt so bad for the Master that I waited fort HW to ensure minimum damages, instead of jerking her off by brute force as would be “normal” when doing a salvage on LOF terms.

After diver inspection and Class approval he sailed, with only 24 hrs. delayed. Not as a happy man, but at least happier then he would have been if there had been extensive damages from the salvage operation.

The owner of the small salvage company I did the occasional job for was not as happy, since his salvage claim under LOF was not as strong as it could have been. (My last job as Salvage Master)

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The North Sea is still as rough as ever:


Even a VLCC is not big enough to withstand the forces that is unleashed in a North Sea storm.

BTW; This happened because the Master was no longer Master in the true sense of the word.

Anybody have more info on this incident? (Name of ship, port of refuge etc.)

Cannot remember a storm of significance of lately…!?