The ''Wildrake'' diving accident was an incident in Scotland in August 1979 that killed two American commercial divers. During a routine dive in the East Shetland Basin of the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

, the

diving bell A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers from the surface to depth and back in open water, usually for the purpose of performing underwater work. The most common types are the open-bottomed wet bell and the closed bell, which c ...

of the

diving support vessel A diving support vessel is a ship that is used as a floating base for professional diving projects. Basic requirements are the ability to keep station accurately and reliably throughout a diving operation, often in close proximity to drilling or ...

MS ''Wildrake'' became separated from its main lift wire at a depth of over . Although the bell was eventually recovered by ''Wildrake'', its two occupants, 32-year-old Richard Arthur Walker and 28-year-old Victor Francis "Skip" Guiel Jr., died of

hypothermia Hypothermia is defined as a body core temperature below in humans. Symptoms depend on the temperature. In mild hypothermia, there is shivering and mental confusion. In moderate hypothermia, shivering stops and confusion increases. In severe ...

. The accident resulted in extensive subsequent litigation and led to important safety changes in the diving industry.

Background

In March 1977, a Single Anchor Leg Mooring (SALM) system was installed in the Thistle oil field as a loading facility for oil tankers. It consisted of a buoy and riser connected to a gravity base on the seafloor. By January 1979, the buoy had become partially disconnected from the riser.

British National Oil Corporation Britoil plc was originally a privatised British oil company operating in the North Sea. It was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. The company was acquired by BP in 1988, becoming a brand of it.Bergen, Norway to be repaired. In early 1978, Brian Masterson, an English businessman and engineer, co-founded Infabco Diving Services Ltd., a commercial diving company. BNOC awarded Infabco a contract for diving services from the drill rig ''Gulnare'' alongside the Thistle Alpha platform. Investigative reporter Bryan Gould would later discover that BNOC's Offshore Construction Manager, Joe Singletary, facilitated Infabco's bid by allowing Masterson to examine his competitors' bids. After the ''Wildrake'' accident, BNOC's security division and Grampian Police investigated the possibility that Masterson had bribed BNOC officials for contracts. On 18 June 1979, BNOC contracted with Infabco to reinstall the SALM on its base in the Thistle field. The MS ''Wildrake'' was a diving support vessel constructed for and owned by Anders Wilhelmsen AS, a Norwegian shipping company. It had a built-in

saturation diving Saturation diving is an ambient pressure diving technique which allows a diver to remain at working depth for extended periods during which the body tissues become solubility, saturated with metabolically inert gas from the breathing gas mixture ...

system designed and built by another Norwegian company, Møllerodden AS. In May 1979, Infabco began negotiations for exclusive rights to the ''Wildrake''. In June and early July, with the ''Wildrake'' moored near Ulsteinvik, Infabco personnel prepared its diving system for use. The system was certified by

Det Norske Veritas Det Norske Veritas (DNV), formerly DNV GL, is an international accredited registrar and classification society headquartered in Høvik, Norway. DNV provides services for several industries, including maritime, oil and gas, renewable energy, e ...

(DNV) on 3 July 1979. In mid-July, 17 bell runs were conducted from the ''Wildrake'' to prepare the SALM base for the reattachment. During this period, several significant alterations were made to the diving system. The swivel connecting the lift wire to the bell was replaced with a pair of shackles. The clump weight below the bell, which served as a backup recovery system, was removed to enable the bell to be launched over the side of the ''Wildrake'' rather than through the ship's

moon pool A moon pool is an equipment deployment and retrieval feature used by oil platforms, marine drilling platforms, drillships, diving support vessels, fishing vessels, oceanography, marine research and underwater exploration or research vessels, and ...

. The bell's drop weights, another secondary means of bell recovery, were lashed to the bell frame with nylon rope to prevent their accidental release. The accidental release of drop weights had caused fatal diving bell accidents in the North Sea in 1974 and 1976. The ''Wildrake'' bell also had no bell stage to keep the bottom hatch out of the mud if the bell became stranded on the sea bottom.

Accident

In late July and early August 1979, ''Wildrake'' divers reattached the SALM buoy to the riser and prepared the SALM for transport from Bjørnafjorden to Thistle field. On the night of 7 August 1979, Richard Walker and Victor Guiel, who had been in saturation since 29 July, were lowered to a depth of in the ''Wildrake'' diving bell to work on the reattachment of the SALM to its base. This was Bell Dive No. 30 from the ''Wildrake''. As the bell was lowered into the ocean, its

transponder In telecommunications, a transponder is a device that, upon receiving a signal, emits a different signal in response. The term is a blend of ''transmitter'' and ''responder''. In air navigation or radio frequency identification, a flight trans ...

came loose, and the ''Wildrake'' deck foreman was ordered to cut it off. Shortly after 02:20 on 8 August, Walker, who had been working outside the bell on the SALM base, saw that the bell had become separated from its lift wire and was hanging at an angle by its life support umbilical. He reported the emergency and rejoined Guiel in the bell, where the two divers closed and sealed the inside door. The bottom door, which opened outward, was left open and secured back to the bell frame. ''Wildrake'' dive superintendent Peter Holmes and dive supervisor Brian Reid believed that the umbilical was the correct secondary means of bell recovery in the system Møllerodden AS had designed. Møllerodden later denied this, and DNV had not certified the umbilical winch for bell recovery. Reid attempted to raise the bell with the umbilical, which was already damaged. The umbilical wheel on the ship's davit consisted of a rubber tire between two circular metal plates. The umbilical became jammed between the tire and one of the side plates. A further attempt to raise the bell on the umbilical using the ship's crane damaged the umbilical even more severely, and power and hot water to the bell were cut off. In response to a faint radio transmission from Walker and Guiel, the ''Wildrake'' crew lowered the bell to the seabed at a depth of .

Rescue attempts

The diving vessel ''Stena Welder'' came alongside the ''Wildrake'' to render assistance in the rescue, but its diving system was undergoing repairs and had to be hastily readied for diving. Rather than having the ''Stena Welder'' recover the bell with its own crane, Holmes and Brian Masterson elected to raise the bell with the ''Wildrakes crane. This necessitated that the ''Stena Welder'' rescue divers attach a guide wire to the bell, which would then be used to send the ''Wildrake'' crane hook to the bell, allowing the rescue diver to attach it to the bell with a wire sling. At 06:09, the ''Stena Welder'' diving bell entered the water carrying rescue divers Phil Kasey-Smith and Eddy Frank. Due to communication problems, failure of the lights on the ''Stena Welder'' bell, the absence of the ''Wildrake'' bell's transponder, and the fact that the ''Wildrake'' crew had forgotten they had moved the bell away from the SALM base a few hours earlier, it took Kasey-Smith nearly an hour to find the ''Wildrake'' bell on the seafloor. At 07:55, he saw Walker and Guiel giving him thumbs up through the porthole. Kasey-Smith spent another hour directing the recovery of the slack guide wire around the SALM base. Because the ''Stena Welder'' was not a dynamic positioning (DP) vessel, it could not be held in a constant position, causing the ''Stena Welder'' bell to drag Kasey-Smith around the seabed on his umbilical. At 09:02, Kasey-Smith attached the guide wire to the bell. The ''Wildrake'' began lowering its crane hook, but Kasey-Smith now saw that Walker and Guiel's movements had become "very very frantic". The crane hook came down too far from the bell for Kasey-Smith to reach it with the wire slings attached to the hook. The hook was raised, had further slings attached, and was sent down again to Kasey-Smith, who attached the slings to the ''Wildrake'' bell at 10:10. The ''Wildrake'' attempted to lift the bell from the bottom at a 45-degree angle rather than vertically, and without a visual confirmation that the bell was clear to be lifted. During the lift, the bell wedged against the side of the SALM base, causing the wire sling to break. The end of the crane wire emerged from the sea at 12:20 without the ''Wildrake'' bell, which was again lost. When rescue diver Frank relocated the bell, he saw that Walker or Guiel had attempted to cut the ropes on the drop weights to allow the bell to surface, but that only one of the two weights was cut free. He also saw that the stranded divers were near death. With Kasey-Smith and Frank at the point of exhaustion, they were brought to the surface in the ''Stena Welder'' bell and relieved by divers Michael Mangan and Tony Slayman. At 18:16, Mangan reconnected the crane wire to the bell. At 19:37, the bell was lifted out of the ocean. It was docked to the ''Wildrake'' saturation system, where Morven White, who had been placed into saturation, examined Walker and Guiel and determined that they were dead. The official pronouncement of death was made by George Shirrifs, who had arrived aboard the ''Wildrake'' with White earlier that day. The divers' postmortems in

Aberdeen Aberdeen ( ; ; ) is a port city in North East Scotland, and is the List of towns and cities in Scotland by population, third most populous Cities of Scotland, Scottish city. Historically, Aberdeen was within the historic county of Aberdeensh ...

determined that they died of

Aftermath

On 9 August 1979, Department of Energy (DoE) inspectors and police boarded the ''Wildrake'' to investigate the accident. DoE inspector Roy Giles found multiple safety violations and evidence of negligence. Richard Walker's widow and Victor Guiel's family retained US attorney Gerald Sterns, who filed a wrongful death complaint in the United States on 30 July 1980 against ten defendants, including Infabco Diving Services and Møllerodden AS. On 28 November 1980, Infabco Diving Services Ltd. was indicted on criminal charges in Aberdeen

Sheriff Court A sheriff court () is the principal local civil and criminal court in Scotland, with exclusive jurisdiction over all civil cases with a monetary value up to , and with the jurisdiction to hear any criminal case except treason, murder, and ra ...

as the employer of Walker and Guiel. At the criminal trial, which began on 15 December 1980, the diving company used what later became known as the "Infabco defence", claiming that the divers were actually employed by a company called Offshore Co-ordinators Ltd., which was located in a bank on

Jersey Jersey ( ; ), officially the Bailiwick of Jersey, is an autonomous and self-governing island territory of the British Islands. Although as a British Crown Dependency it is not a sovereign state, it has its own distinguishing civil and gov ...

and registered in the

Isle of Man The Isle of Man ( , also ), or Mann ( ), is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, between Great Britain and Ireland. As head of state, Charles III holds the title Lord of Mann and is represented by a Lieutenant Govern ...

. On 19 December 1980, Sheriff Alastair Stewart ruled that the Crown had failed to prove that Infabco was Walker and Guiel's employer. He therefore directed the jury to find Infabco not guilty. In May 1981, the

United States District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the United States federal judiciary, U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each United States federal judicial district, federal judicial district. Each district cov ...

in Los Angeles awarded compensatory damages of $475,000 to Walker's widow and daughter and $75,000 to Guiel's family. This judgement, however, would never be enforced by the British court system. A fatal accident inquiry on Walker and Guiel's deaths was held from 11 to 22 May 1981 in Aberdeen. At the inquiry, Walker's widow, Jeanne Walker, read aloud the final entry from her husband's diary, written on 7 August 1979, in which he commented, "I don't even know if I'm gonna get out of here alive." Sheriff Douglas James Risk issued his Determinations on 13 November 1981. He found that the removal of the clump weight contributed to the divers' deaths and that the absence of a bell stage indicated "that the diving contractors were more concerned with speed than with safety". He also concluded that Walker and Guiel "could probably have been saved" if Masterson had not ordered the crane lift to continue without investigating the obstruction impeding the lift, which proved to be the SALM base. On 17 December 1981, the

Thames Television Thames Television, commonly simplified to just Thames, was a franchise holder for a region of the British ITV television network serving London and surrounding areas from 30 July 1968 until the night of 31 December 1992. Thames Television broa ...

current affairs series '' TV Eye'' broadcast ''The Last Dive'', a documentary featuring investigative reporter and former Member of Parliament Bryan Gould, which alleged that an improper relationship existed between Brian Masterson and Joe Singletary, BNOC's Offshore Construction Manager at the time of the accident. On 23 July 1982, the Edinburgh law firm of Simpson and Marwick filed suit in the United Kingdom against twelve defendants on behalf of the Walker and Guiel families. In October 1986, the remaining defendants settled, agreeing to pay £293,000 to the Walkers and a much smaller amount (possibly around $8000) to the Guiels. No admission of wrongdoing was made by the defendants. The ''Wildrake'', renamed ''Felinto Perry'', later became a

submarine rescue ship A submarine rescue ship is a surface support ship for submarine rescue and deep-sea salvage operations. Methods employed include the McCann Rescue Chamber, deep-submergence rescue vehicles (DSRV's) and diving operations. List of active su ...

in the

Brazilian Navy The Brazilian Navy () is the navy, naval service branch of the Brazilian Armed Forces, responsible for conducting naval warfare, naval operations. The navy was involved in War of Independence of Brazil#Naval action, Brazil's war of independence ...

. In May 2000, the ''Wildrake'' accident records in London were found to be missing.

Background

Accident

Rescue attempts

Aftermath

References

Sources

External links

See also