She was expecting her son Tom home that day, after his 21-day tour of duty on the Ocean Ranger. Only 22 bodies were recovered.Īt 6:00 that morning, in Plainfield, Conn., Gloria Blevins arose to turn on the heat. Of her crew of 84, there were no survivors. The Ocean Ranger capsized and sank at 3:05 a.m. Twenty men were still inside, strapped in place by their seat belts. The lifeboat was upside down, had a hole in its bow and was split open along the bottom like a purse. Duncan's crew, only yards away, threw lines and floats, but the men were unable to help themselves. The men, wearing light clothing, began losing consciousness as soon as they entered the sub-freezing water. But when six men gathered on its rail to be rescued, the lifeboat capsized and they were spilled into the sea. A lifeboat appeared out of the driving snow and motored to his supply ship. The lights were attached to the lifejackets of men. When Duncan got there an hour later, he saw many tiny glowing lights in the water. "Would you like to discuss this problem with me?"Ī moment later: "We are listing to port, and all countermeasures are ineffective." The rig was a strong blip on his radar screen. "Yes, certainly, I'll start coming in closer now," Duncan radioed back. "Will you come in a little closer, please? We've got a problem here on the rig." Duncan received a radio call at 1:05 a.m. Well, Oklahoma didn't move around under your feet, either.Ĭapt. But the oil men who ran the Ocean Ranger just propped up their cowboy boots and smiled. Veteran ship captains were amazed to find that she hardly rocked at all, often less than half a degree. Towering 37 stories from keel to derrick top, moored by 12 anchors with cables each a mile long, the Ranger seemed a temple of stability. The Ranger was a new deep-sea conception - as square and solid as the Parthenon, which, with her eight massive supporting columns, she somewhat resembled. On the Ocean Ranger, lit up like a resort island five miles away, it would be quite different. He would make no deliveries of drill pipe or food crates to the rig this night. The air temperature was 24 degrees, the salt water, 29.ĭuncan's mission was to stand by the Ocean Ranger, the world's largest floating oil-drilling rig, and endure with his crew of seven the heaving, pitching bronco ride of a howling storm 170 miles off Newfoundland. Ronald Duncan's supply ship was rolling wildly in a 100-mph North Atlantic blizzard.
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