8 minute read
Memories of the Ocean Ranger
On the 40th anniversary of its sinking on a stormy February night, Lloyd Major thinks about his days aboard the Ocean Ranger and the co-workers who were lost.
It was the pioneer days of oil exploration in Newfoundland and offshore drilling that created a new employment opportunity for me. The Ocean Ranger came to our waters to join the rigs Zapata Ugland and Sedco 706 that were also hired by Mobil Oil to drill oil exploration wells on the Grand Banks.
Lloyd Major onboard the Ocean Ranger
To my knowledge, a certain quota of Newfoundlanders had to be hired by the half-dozen companies whose employees worked in rotation. The Ocean Ranger was the first rig in the area to have a woman as staff onboard. She was a geologist from Mobil Oil in Calgary. I was hired as a medic and radio operator/timekeeper in November 1980. In a few days, I was off to the Ocean Ranger with no helicopter safety training, nor any other rig training.
Most of the new hires had no experience working on an offshore oil rig, so training was essential and was completed on the rig. We usually had 80-90 workers on board and we tried to maintain a comfortable work environment. We worked 21 twelve-hour days on the rig and 21 days off, so our co-workers were like a second family in our lives.
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
The first few trips resulted in many Newfoundlanders – first-time rig workers – finding themselves unwilling to take on the mental stress of the isolation in this new environment, particularly the married men. Stress contributed to more than one accident. However, most people became comfortable with their new jobs after a few rotations. The living quarters were excellent, as was the food. Everything on the rig was kept scrupulously clean.
Our 21-day hitch started in St. John’s, staying the night before at the Fort Motel. I picked up the men who were flying in – mostly from the US – in time to helicopter out with us to the rig the following day. That night most of us would go out on the town for a few refreshments. The rig itself was a dry rig – no alcohol or drugs permitted. If an employee was found to be in possession of either, he was immediately dismissed.
We wore orange suits in the helicopter, but I would not call them survival suits. The two-hour flight was the most dangerous part of the shift – or so I thought. Once we landed on the rig, most of us went to work at 6 p.m. that very day. I worked 42 days straight on my first trip until my relief medic, Ken Blackmore, was hired and sent to the rig. This allowed enough time for me to set up the hospital and order the proper supplies.
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
My hours of work were from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the radio room as radio operator. I also recorded all work times for employees of ODECO, the subcontractor overseeing operations. I was the liaison between the Newfoundland employees and the company.
As a medic, I was on call 24 hours a day and had telephone access to a doctor in St. John’s. In case of emergency, a stand-by supply boat was available to assist with transport. The six-bed hospital on the Ocean Ranger had an ample supply of medications, mainly to treat the common cold and flu, and there was lots of room to treat accident victims. We had a few cases that remained in the rig hospital. One man had galvanize poisoning while welding; another had a very bad arm infection. We had an eye injury that had to be medevaced to St John’s; I escorted that case on the helicopter. One of the worst was an accident where a man lost three fingers off one hand – only his forefinger and thumb remained. The helicopter could not get through for a couple of days due to the frequent fog, so I escorted him to St John’s on the standby supply boat for the more than 12-hour trip. It was a rough trip for him. There was also the case of an employee who jumped off the rig. My friend from Florida, Warren Abadie, was the safety officer involved in the search along with the RCMP, but the man’s body was never found.
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
On the lighter side, one morning at about 2 a.m., crane operator Martin Blackmore brought a seagull with a broken leg to the hospital. The bird had hit the tag line of his crane. I fixed the leg and released the bird at daybreak. Next day I was awakened and summoned to the radio room for a call from head office in New Orleans. They wanted to know if I was running an animal hospital on the rig. They got an earful from me; I got an apology and went back to bed. What a joke.
We had safety meetings every Sunday, and I attended to help the safety officer. Mike Watkins was the last safety officer on board and would be among those who went down with the rig on that fateful night in February 1982. I remember one safety meeting where an employee was causing a disturbance in the back of the room. Randall Ferguson stood up and pointed the only finger he had on his right hand and said, “If it floats, it can sink, so don’t be an idiot!”
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
The ballast control room was in column three. This is where the porthole was located that was smashed that awful night. Sea water got on the controls and was a major cause of the sinking of the rig, in my opinion. On the Christmas before the tragedy, the control room operator and I wrote a poem to Kent Thompson, the tool pusher. Verse 11, I’ll never forget: “And don’t forget those lonely souls in starboard column three. They keep y’all from waking up in the cold Atlantic sea.”
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
On February 15, 1982, I woke early at home in Dunville and heard on the radio that the Ocean Ranger was in trouble. At that moment, I had a bad feeling that the rig was not only in trouble, but was going down. I was summoned by the company to St. John’s immediately. Upon arrival I found panic in the office. The phones were ringing non-stop with calls from families scared for their loved ones. As the news spread that the rig had sunk, people rushed to the office desperate for news. The horrific and gruesome ordeal began. I spent the next few days on the waterfront with other company representatives doing the preliminary identification of the bodies that were brought ashore by the supply boats. That night, another ship sank in the 100-foot waves. Their bodies were brought to the wharf as well, so we had to separate those bodies from ours. There were 84 persons on the Ocean Ranger that night; all were drowned, but only 23 victims were ever found. Of those, 18 were Newfoundlanders, three were American citizens and two were from Alberta.
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
My relief, Ken Blackmore, was one of the first victims found, and I did the positive identification of him. Jim Coutts and I went to Norris Arm for the funeral. This was the first time I met his wife and introduced myself. Not a good feeling. After the funeral, Jim and I returned to the office and continued the much-needed communications with other families.
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
Scenes of everyday life on the Ocean Ranger
In October of that year, I was summoned to the inquiry by the provincial government commission under chairman Alex Hickman. I was questioned by a huge panel of lawyers representing many companies and by the commissioners. Being questioned at any inquiry can be stressful and, believe me, it was.
After 40 years, I still remember the good days working on the Ocean Ranger. But I will never forget the faces of the men who lost their lives in that cold Atlantic sea.
Downhome Magazine, February 2022
You can find this story in the February 2022 issue of Downhome magazine.
