Video: ‘Disasters of the Century | Season 1 | Episode 37 | Ocean Ranger | Ian Michael Coulson’

(Monday, February 15, 1982, 12:52 a.m. Newfoundland Standard Time) — Ocean Ranger, a semi-submersible mobile offshore drilling unit, sank in a storm 166 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, early this morning. All 84 men aboard perished in 50-foot seas.

The rig operator, Mobil Oil Canada Ltd., said that the men aboard, including 15 Americans, 68 Canadians and one Briton, were ordered to abandon the drilling platform when it developed a 15-degree list after a nightlong beating by winds of up to 80 miles an hour. The water where the rig operated was more than 250 feet deep.

A Canadian Royal Commission spent two years looking into the disaster. The joint Federal-Provincial Royal Commission on the Ocean Ranger Marine Disaster found that the crew were not trained, the safety equipment was inadequate, there were no safety protocols for the supply ship, and that the platform itself had a number of flaws.