I was on the Danwood Ice offshore Danang Vietnam as an ROV Pilot / Tech when the DB29 went down. We saw the awful sight of bodies floating down the south china sea towards us (in life jackets) a few days later. They were recovered by the small Vietnam Navy boat that patrolled around us.
The barge Superintendent, who’m I’d worked with was too “gung ho” & hadn’t experienced a typhoon like some of the others & & he wanted to become a member of that exclusive club of Superintendents & instead of leaving, he was determined to ride it out. I worked, before & after, with most of the guys onboard but, in particular, Steve Hardy (Bradford UK), Terry Dennison [Hull UK) & lastly Brian Shepherd. I also knew most of the divers onboard that day, having supervised many of their earlier dives or dived with them. In the aftermath of talking with many onboard & with those who walked on the upturned hull of the barge, this is what I know from the many ‘horses mouths’ that were onboard. It was an anchor buoy that wasn’t secured on deck that rolled into an air vent, standing 6 or 8ft tall above deck, & wiped it out. I believe it was on the port stern, if memory serves me well. With the derrick on the stern, the last thing required back there was an unlimited supply of extra ‘ballast’ from the waves that broke across the deck. Divers jumped in & did all they could to close doors & isolate the flooding but couldn’t stop it. DB29 got back heavy & sank backwards & sideways & rotated. She flipped over on her way to around 60ft & some of my mates got dragged down there. At that point, the sat system was at 40ft, which is why the door seal(s) broke & in came the water. What then happened, subsea, was the derrick ‘fell off’ &, without that weight, the barge came back up but upside down & a whole bunch of guys scrambled aboard & walked upon the hull in the middle of the ongoing typhoon. Gary Hunt was the diving manager for Singapore at the time. A really close friend of mine. I’d got home from Dubai & called him & he was also in UK on leave. That’s when he asked me if I’d seen the news…& I hadn’t. It’s a day I have never forgotten…After that phone call, all of the above unfolded.
Rwebb…Look for my post below, as of May 31st 2026. It might answer some questions.
2,500t derricks, not 3,000t…& that was ‘short tons’..i.e. 2,000 lbs per ton & not 2,240lbs. I know that because I spent years working on DB27 from the first project she was ever involved with in the Gulf & had some time working on DB29 & just about every barge Jay Ray had during the 70’s, 80’s & 90s working the Middle & far East. Post the loss of he ‘29’, I was also in the first sat team to return to offshore Hong Kong. The ‘29’ remained untouched at that time but during that SBM, SPM installation, we ran from 2 typhoons &, believe me, it was a bit hairy, in sat, racing back to Hong Kong at a whole 4kts as we rocked & rolled our way to safety.
The buoy was designed to sit in about 60ft of water & out of the reach of a typhoon but, as we were working on its installation, it had a secondary buoy which allowed it to float on the surface. That concoction isn’t something you can unbolt. No. We had a buoyancy tank that was going to be separated via pre-installed explosives to sheer the bolts by our onboard explosives expert, who’d been onboard for weeks, twiddling his thumbs. After the 2nd typhoon had passed, a tug was sent out into the field to assess sea conditions & they arrived on site, spot on the co-ordinates of our project…but there was no floating anything…just loads of water! As they scoured the area, someone said “Go to the known position of the buoy & look over the side”…& they could see our buoy sitting comfortably at its designed 60ft depth. The typhoon managed to rip the top buoy off & it was found something like 100 miles away, having been dragged into a port by some local fishermen! Needless to say, the explosives expert was sent home. A Typhoon had done his job for him!