Ocean Ranger: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The Ocean Ranger was an offshore exploration oil drilling platform that went down 315 kilometres (175 nautical miles) from St. Johns, off the coast of Newfoundland on February 14, 1982 with 84 men aboard. There were no survivors.

The Ocean Ranger was the largest semi-submersible offshore exploration oil drilling platform of the day. Built in 1976 by Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, it operated off the coasts of Alaska, New Jersey, Ireland, and in November 1980 the Grand Banks. Because of her massive size she was able to drill in areas too dangerous for other rigs.

Considered unsinkable, training of the crews on board was insufficient at best. She was the Titanic of the offshore oil industry.

On Sunday, February 14th, 1982, a vicious unexpected winter storm with 100 mph winds and 60 foot swells developed south of Newfoundland and headed for the Grand Banks. Around 7:00 PM, with seas over 100 feet high, the main deck of the Ocean Ranger reported to the mobile shore base in St. John's that they had been hit by an especially huge wave and would attempting to separate the main drilling platform from the rest of the rig if they could bring up the drill. This had been done only once or twice before. They did not succeed.

Sometime after 7 PM the Ocean Ranger reported another giant wave had crashed over the rig, smashing through the ballast control room port hole. The port hole was only 30 feet above the water line and did not have its steel storm plate installed. Water rushed in, soaking the control panel and shorting out its analogue relays, causing the rig to list to about 10 degrees.

The crew removed the relays, rinsed them in clean water to get the salt out of them, and dried them with a hairdryer. But when they reinstalled the relays and turned on the power, the control panel was still wet and shorted out again.

The crew then attempted to manually start the pumps to right the rig, and here made the critical error that led to the its demise. There were no manuals on board explaining the ballast control system. Knowledge about it had been passed from one crew rotation to the next by word of mouth. Instead of emptying the ballast tank on the side where the rig was listing, they instead pumped in more water, increasing the list to about 15 degrees.

Its fate was sealed. At 1:30 am, the Ocean Ranger radioed it was abandoning ship.

Due to being thought unsinkable, safety drills had been haphazard. During the evacuation attempt many did not even make it into the lifeboats, instead jumping over the side into the cold waters of the North Atlantic, to perish within minutes.

Rescue attempts by helicopter and the supply ship Seaforth Highlander were hampered by the storm and cold water. The men in the lifeboat capsized it when they all stood on one side as they tried to climb a rescue line thrown to them from the supply ship. The Seaforth Highlander then launched its own large inflatable life raft, but it floated away just out of reach of the freezing and drowning men. The men on the supply ship then used long poles with hooks on the ends to try to catch the men stranded in the sea, but to no avail. All hands aboard the Ocean Ranger perished, and at 3:38 a.m on February 15th the rig capsized and sank to the ocean floor.

Over the next week 22 bodies were recovered, most without a mark, the men having died in the cold water for lack of survival suits. Autopsies showed those men had drowned.

A Canadian Royal Commission spent two years looking into the disaster. It concluded the Ocean Ranger had design and construction flaws, particularly in the ballast control room, and that the crew lacked proper safety training, survival suits, and equipment.

It also concluded that inspection and regulation by U.S. and Canadian government agencies was ineffective.