Think the Ocean Ranger oil rig was unsinkable? Think again! Dive into the gripping true story of how one tiny broken porthole led to a massive disaster and changed safety regulations forever. Discover the real reasons behind the tragedy and what lessons were learned. Subscribe for more incredible stories and let us know in the comments what surprised you most! #history #disaster #documentary #engineering #truecrime
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0:00 - The Storm Approaches Ocean Ranger
2:17 - Preparations and Early Warnings
4:37 - Critical Damage and Malfunctions
6:28 - Sinking and Failed Rescue Efforts
10:20 - Ocean Ranger's Design and Operations
12:33 - How Human Error Led to Disaster
15:33 - Investigations, Legacy, and Reforms
👉 This channel was created in collaboration with https://www.youtube.com/@noelpolotv
0:00 - The Storm Approaches Ocean Ranger
2:17 - Preparations and Early Warnings
4:37 - Critical Damage and Malfunctions
6:28 - Sinking and Failed Rescue Efforts
10:20 - Ocean Ranger's Design and Operations
12:33 - How Human Error Led to Disaster
15:33 - Investigations, Legacy, and Reforms
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00As a powerful winter storm rapidly approaches the Ocean Ranger oil rig, almost no one is
00:05concerned about safety. After all, it was built to be almost impossible to sink. But it still sank
00:12and eventually the reason why became clear. Sunday, February 14, 1982
00:17As the storm was approaching from the south toward Newfoundland, a shore-based radio operator from
00:23Mobile Oil of Canada in St. John's contacted nearby offshore oil rigs to warn them.
00:30One of those who received the message was the Ocean Ranger, the largest semi-submersible oil rig in
00:36the world. Even though it was designed to withstand storms much stronger than the one approaching,
00:42the crew still decided to stop drilling as a precaution. They retreated to their quarters
00:47while waiting for the storm to arrive. By nightfall, the storm hit the oil rig with full force.
00:53But the Ocean Ranger was built strong, so it was able to withstand the pounding waves.
00:58The only thing that got damaged was a small window in the ballast control room.
01:0330 minutes before midnight, the radio operator on shore received a normal weather report from
01:08the Ocean Ranger. There was no sign of any problem with the rig. Not even the slightest hint of the
01:14tragedy that was about to happen in a few moments. An hour and 30 minutes later, the senior foreman of
01:19the Ocean Ranger sent a report that the rig was severely listing. 10 minutes after that, he started
01:25sending out mayday calls. The nearby standby vessel immediately went to the location of the rig and
01:31found scattered and destroyed lifeboats. But because of the darkness and huge waves,
01:36they couldn't get close. The storm was too strong. 84 men from the oil rig were left at the mercy
01:43of the
01:43raging sea. By morning, the storm had subsided and the sea became calm again. A rescue helicopter flew to the
01:50area to search for survivors. But they did not find a single living person. The entire oil rig disappeared,
01:57leaving only the anchor buoys floating in the place where the Ocean Ranger once stood. The sea and the storm
02:03covered almost all traces of the tragedy that happened to this oil rig. But before we begin, if you're new
02:10to our
02:10channel, please subscribe so you'll always be updated with videos like this.
02:17On Valentine's Day in 1982, Ocean Ranger was conducting a drilling operation at exploration
02:23well J-34 in the Hibernia oil field. It is located southeast of Newfoundland on the Grand Banks plateaus.
02:31There were 84 workers on the rig at that time and 56 of them were local residents. Because there were
02:37few jobs in the region and the oil industry paid very well, many young people from Newfoundland were
02:44encouraged to work here. Around 8 in the morning, the workers on the rig received a storm warning.
02:49According to the report, the wind was expected to reach up to 90 knots and there could be waves as
02:55high as 37 feet or more than 11 meters. The crew immediately began preparing for the approaching
03:01storm. At around 4.30 in the afternoon, they stopped the drilling operations. The drilling pipe was
03:08removed and pulled back. Afterwards, the workers returned to their quarters while waiting for the
03:14arrival of the storm. At around 7 in the evening, a huge wave hit the nearby oil rig, Sedco 706.
03:22According to the workers there, the wave was much higher than expected. It reportedly reached between
03:2770 to 80 feet or almost 20 to 25 meters high. Although it caused some minor damage to the structure
03:34of the
03:35rig, Sedco 706 was still able to withstand the intense storm. Another oil rig that was also
03:41conducting drilling at the Hibernia oil fields, the Zapata Ugland, was also hit by the same giant wave,
03:48but did not sustain serious damage. A few moments after the two rigs were hit, the massive wave reached the
03:55Ocean Ranger, which was even larger than the previous rigs. This is the largest semi-submersible oil rig in the
04:02world,
04:02so even a 70-foot wave should not pose a threat to its upper hull and drilling floor. The rig
04:08workers were
04:09confident about this. The Ocean Ranger is held in position by three strong anchor cables at each corner,
04:15so it can easily withstand strong and high waves. The only damage it sustained was a broken porthole
04:22window in the ballast control room located in one of the starboard columns. A radio operator from the
04:28nearby support vessel Seaforth Highlander heard the radio communication and personally witnessed the
04:34incident at around 8 o'clock in the evening. Within just a few minutes, the damage was also fixed.
04:40The crew covered the broken porthole and cleaned up the shards of glass. But that seemingly small and
04:46simple incident led to a much bigger problem. Because the glass broke, a large amount of seawater entered the
04:52control room and soaked the ballast control panel. This caused a short circuit. Since that panel controls
04:58the valves of the ballast tank, it started to malfunction. Because of the short circuit, the
05:03valves started opening and closing on their own. This caused water to go into the wrong tanks.
05:09What's worse, the ballast tanks are gradually filling up with seawater. If the ballast tanks contain more
05:15water, the rig will sink deeper into the sea and become more vulnerable to large waves.
05:20Senior ballast operator Donald Rathbun and his assistant Dominic Dyke tried to regain control
05:26of the panel. But every time they touched it, they got an electric shock. The only way for Rathbun
05:32to stop the valves from malfunctioning was to completely shut off the power. But there was
05:38one big problem. No one knew where the switch was. It was only around 9pm when the electrician finally
05:45found the right switch and turned it off completely. At last, the malfunctioning valves were brought
05:50under control. By 9.06pm, the senior drilling foreman of Ocean Ranger, Jack Jacobson, contacted
05:58his colleagues at Sedco 706 and Zapata Ugland to find out how they were coping with the storm. He told
06:06them about the broken porthole but also assured them that the rig's ballast control equipment was working
06:11normally again. An hour later, he repeated the same report to his superintendent Merv Graham in St.
06:17John's. The last radio communication that night was the weather report sent by the Ocean Ranger to
06:23shore at around 11.30pm. It did not mention any problems with the rig. There was no sign that just
06:30an hour and a half later, around 1 o'clock in the morning, Jacobson would be forced to call for
06:35help from
06:36the Coast Guard. In their radio correspondence, Jacobson reported that the rig was already listing
06:41heavily. It was already tilted forward by about 8 to 10 degrees and the people needed to be evacuated.
06:47There was nothing else they could do to stop it from continuing to tip over.
06:51The rig was slowly sinking along with the 84 people on board. As the tilt worsened by the minute around
06:581.05am, Jacobson contacted the support vessel Seaforth Highlander and asked for help.
07:05Five minutes later, the radio operator of Ocean Ranger contacted the shore operator and asked them
07:11to send out a mayday signal. The last message received from the rig came around 1.30am. There
07:18will be no further radio communication from Ocean Ranger and we are heading to the lifeboat stations.
07:23At that point, the rig was already tilted at almost 15 degrees and there was no hope of saving it.
07:29The whole crew was already in the lifeboats. Even though the Ocean Ranger was already severely
07:35tilted, the men still had enough time to board the three fiberglass lifeboats, enough to accommodate
07:40all personnel before they were released into the raging sea. Those lifeboats had radios and were
07:46specially designed to withstand severe weather and icy seas. For the crew, that was their last hope for
07:54survival. Or at least, that's what they thought. As the lifeboats were being lowered from nearly 60-foot
08:01davits, they were struck by extremely strong winds reaching up to 80 knots. Because of the strong winds
08:08and the severe tilt of the rig, the lifeboats repeatedly slammed against the side of the Ocean Ranger
08:13until some of them cracked and broke apart. And the situation got even worse when the lifeboats reached
08:18the water. The crew had trouble detaching the lifeboats from the cables and hooks attached to
08:24them. While they were trying to detach them, the lifeboats were slowly filling up with freezing
08:29seawater. In these kinds of conditions, survival was almost impossible. By 2am, the support vessel
08:36Seaforth Highlander arrived at the scene of the tragedy. They found only a single lifeboat floating with
08:42eight men on board. Around it were scattered pieces of a destroyed lifeboat and abandoned life vests.
08:49The Highlander tried to approach the lifeboat, but it did not have enough equipment to carry out an
08:54actual rescue operation. So what they did was bring the ship as close as possible while the survivors
09:01tried to reach the side of the ship. But it was almost impossible to do that in the middle of
09:07the
09:07raging sea. As they struggled to reach the back of the ship, the survivors from the lifeboat fell one
09:13by one into the freezing water. Not a single one of them was saved. After 30 minutes, the first rescue
09:20helicopter arrived. But by that time, all 84 men from the Ocean Ranger had already perished due to
09:27hypothermia and drowning. An hour later, at around 3.38am, the Ocean Ranger completely disappeared from the
09:34radar. The next day, even though helicopters conducted an aerial search and other rescue
09:40vessels arrived at the area, they did not find any clear trace of the tragedy. Only the anchor buoys
09:46were floating on the calm sea. In the following days, the search and rescue teams recovered 22 bodies
09:53from the sea. The examination revealed that all of them died due to extreme cold and drowning.
10:0064 people were never found. All of them perished while trying to escape from an oil rig that was
10:07once considered unsinkable. Officials from Mobile Oil and the families of the victims could not understand
10:13how such a tragedy could happen, and eventually it turned out that it all started with a simple
10:19broken porthole. When the Ocean Ranger was launched in 1976, it was proudly introduced as the largest semi-submersible
10:27oil rig in the world. A rig that was said to be almost impossible to sink. It was built at
10:32the
10:33number 2 EBA shipyard of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, under contract from the Ocean Drilling and Exploration
10:39Company, or ODECO, of New Orleans, USA. The rig was first used in 1976 in the Bering Sea near Alaska.
10:48After that, it also operated in New Jersey and Ireland. In 1980, it was leased by Mobile Oil Canada Limited
10:55for $93,000 per day. At the Hibernia oil fields, the platform conducted exploratory drilling for the company.
11:02The Ocean Ranger was enormous. It was 396 feet long, 262 feet wide, and stood as tall as 337 feet.
11:13On top of it was the upper hull with two decks, where the accommodation area, drill floor, and heli deck
11:18were located.
11:19The upper hull rested on eight large vertical columns. Aside from providing support to the entire structure,
11:25these columns also housed various equipment, storage areas, pipes, ducts, and the oil rig's electrical wiring.
11:34In the third starboard column, you can find the ballast control room. Meanwhile, in each stern column,
11:40there is an elevator that connects the upper hull to the pontoons. The entire structure of the rig is
11:45further supported by an additional framework of braces and trusses to make it stronger against
11:50strong waves and winds. The Ocean Ranger is a semi-submersible type of oil rig. This means it
11:56does not stand directly on the seabed, but floats on two large pontoons. These pontoons have compartments.
12:03These pontoons have compartments for the oil rig. By letting water in and out of these tanks,
12:09the height and balance of the oil rigs at sea can be controlled. This entire process is controlled by
12:16a system of pipelines connected to pumps and tanks, along with remotely operated valves monitored from
12:23the ballast control room located on the third starboard. The pontoons also have a pump room and
12:30a propulsion room at their rear section. Now, the big question is, how did a massive oil rig weighing 25
12:37,000
12:38tons sink just because of a broken porthole that was only 12 inches wide? The truth is,
12:44the broken porthole only started a chain of events that was made worse by human error. Decisions that
12:50eventually pushed the Ocean Ranger toward disaster. After the ballast control panel got wet and the
12:56ballast tank valves started malfunctioning, Ratboon was able to temporarily control the situation
13:03by shutting off the power. But around midnight, the crew in the ballast control room turned the power
13:08back on. They thought the control panel had dried, so they wanted to remove the water from the ballast
13:14tanks to raise the upper deck of the rig and keep it away from the big waves. Unfortunately, that turned
13:20out to be a fatal decision. When the power was turned back on, the valves started malfunctioning again and
13:26allowed a huge amount of seawater to enter the tanks at the front, or bow tanks. Because of this,
13:32the rig began to tilt to the left at the front. When Ratboon realized what was happening, he tried to
13:37manually close the valves between the ballast tanks at the front and the pump room at the back,
13:42but he failed. In a desperate attempt to correct the situation and stop the rig from tilting further,
13:48he operated the pump to remove water from the front. But there was one important thing he didn't
13:54consider, or perhaps should have known as a senior ballast operator. It turns out that the rig's pump
14:00was a suction pump. Since it relies solely on atmospheric pressure, it can hardly pump water
14:06from a level lower than its own location. And that's exactly what was happening as the rig
14:11continued to tilt. As the front part of the ocean ranger sank deeper, it became lower than the rear
14:17where the pump was located. Instead of helping, it had the opposite effect. Because the valves were still
14:23open, even more water entered the bow tanks. In fact, it would have been better if Rathbun had
14:29prioritized draining the water from the ballast tanks closer to the pump room first. This way,
14:34the rig would have gradually returned to proper balance, and it would also have been possible
14:39to remove the water from the tanks at the front. But before they could fix the situation,
14:44the final blow struck the ocean ranger. As the entire structure continued to tilt, massive waves
14:50reach the end of the corner column at the port bow. That's where seawater began to enter the hollow
14:55column through a chain locker opening. Thousands of gallons of water quickly flooded inside the
15:01column, causing the rig to tilt even more. Narath Rathbun and his crew had no idea this was happening
15:08because the ocean ranger didn't have flooding sensors in its columns. When the rig tilted to 15
15:13degrees from its normal position, it reached the point of no return. In just three and a half hours,
15:20the largest semi-submersible oil rig in the world completely sank. Not only did the crew fail to stop
15:27it from sinking, they also didn't realize that some of the actions they took actually sped up the tragedy.
15:33On March 17, 1982, the Canadian Royal Commission launched an investigation to find out why the ocean rangers
15:41sank and why not a single crew member survived. For two years, they conducted an in-depth investigation,
15:49interviewed witnesses, recovered important parts of the rig from the seabed, and carried out various
15:55studies to understand the true cause of the tragedy. In their conclusion, it was revealed that aside from
16:01several serious design flaws in the rig, such as the lack of watertight hatches on the portholes and
16:07chain locker, mobile oil and Odeco also greatly neglected the importance of emergency preparedness.
16:13Worker training and safety were also neglected, and the ocean ranger lacked proper life-saving equipment,
16:20and the workers also did not know how to use the limited equipment they had. Some former workers of
16:26the ocean ranger even said that they did not receive proper evacuation training. The rare training sessions
16:32held back then were usually conducted only on Sunday afternoons and were not taken seriously.
16:37The commission also found that the people assigned to operate the ballast control system,
16:42which is crucial for the stability of the semi-submersible rig, were not required to have
16:48formal training according to existing regulations. In other words, the tragedy could have been avoided if
16:54the crew had been better trained and more prepared. In response to the commission's report, the Canadian
16:59government implemented new and stricter regulations for the operation of oil rigs. These included
17:05relocating ballast control rooms to higher and safer locations, as well as using simpler ballast control
17:12systems to avoid complications during emergencies. Formal training for all ballast operators was also made
17:18mandatory. At the same time, the rules regarding worker safety and emergency preparedness were also made
17:25stricter. Lifeboat launching systems were improved and introduced as mandatory equipment. Immersion
17:32suits as well. These special suits are designed to protect a person against hypothermia when they end
17:39up in cold water for a long time, something that the crew of the ocean ranger did not have on
17:45the night
17:45the tragedy happened. In addition, every worker on the oil rig is required to undergo emergency evacuation
17:52training and learn how to use life-saving equipment. But even with all these changes implemented,
17:57it still did not ease the pain felt by the families of the victims. Many of them filed cases against
18:03Mobile Oil and Odeko due to negligence in providing proper training and adequate life-saving equipment,
18:10shortcomings that led to the deaths of 84 workers. In the end, the cases were settled and a compensation
18:17package worth 20 million US dollars was given. But it's sad to think that the number of lives lost because
18:24of the ocean ranger didn't end at 84. In June 1983, the Canadian government hired a company to raise the
18:32rig
18:33and sink it in a deeper part of the sea because it had become a hazard to passing ships. In
18:38that operation,
18:39three more divers lost their lives. Two of them died due to an underwater explosion, while the other was hit
18:45by a
18:46falling object. Finally, in August 1983, the ocean ranger was permanently sunk into the depths of the sea.
18:52But it left behind the grief of the families of the 84 workers and the memory of a tragedy caused
18:59by
18:59severe human negligence.
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