RedHanded - ShortHand: The Byford Dolphin Incident

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

Somehow, perhaps the worst deep-sea diving disaster in history – one that led to two men being crushed, three men boiling to death, and one man being liquified and shot out of a five-inch hole – happened above sea level.How? Well, join us off the coast of Norway for a little explosive decompression – and find out what can happen when the pressure of diving just gets too much…--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

Hello. Hello. Welcome to another short-hand where today is going to be my aim to make everybody feel very uncomfortable. When is it ever not your aim to do that? Good question. So yes, we are all, are we not, Tanner, obsessed with deep sea diving? Oh, too much. Last breath, man. I've watched that like seven times. If you have not watched the last breath, I don't know how else I can sell it to you. Go watch. it is so fucking harrowing. I love it. It's so good. We're not supposed to go down there.

I know. That is the fucking theme of this entire episode. Why can't we just stay on land where we belong? Quite. Because yes, I'm sure all of you listening, just like Hannah and I, are completely obsessed with deep sea diving, either because we're nuts and we want to try it or we already do it, or because it's a horrific nightmare and the very idea makes us want to jump out of a window. I firmly fall into the latter category. And despite my horror, or I guess because of it,

I watch every single documentary YouTube video and news report about all the things that can go wrong deep down under the sea. Usually, the people getting themselves into all sorts of trouble down there are recreational divers, people who have pushed themselves too far or made some sort of terrible calculation while trying to dive in some godforsaken underwater cave. things don't go wrong as often when it comes to commercial diving. But when things do go awry in that particular arena, the results are usually catastrophic. And the story we have for you today,

the 1973 Biford Dolphin Incident, is widely regarded as one of the most horrific ocean deaths ever. But how did it happen and why? What exactly led to two men being cross? crushed, three men boiling to death, and one man being liquefied and shot out of a five-inch hole. Well, prepare yourselves. This is the shorthand, and it's definitely a no-eating episode. Let us begin with an oil rig, a specific one. In 1974, the Byford Dolphin was launched. It was a Norwegian-purpose-built semi-submersible oil rig.

and if you're having trouble mentally picturing that, try imagining a huge ship that could morph into oil and gas drilling platforms in the middle of the ocean. And the Bifah Dolphin was stationed off the coast of Norway because Norway have what? Way more fucking oil than everybody else and that's why they're not in the EU because they don't need to be. The Bifah Dolphin was a state-of-the-art rig when it was built. absolutely massive. It weighed 3,000 tonnes, could carry a crew of 100 people and was capable of drilling to a staggering 20,000 foot. And since it was the absolute cutting edge of technology at the time, it required a lot of complex management. Like keeping the rig steady above water, drilling into the seafloor itself, and of course the maintenance of all that equipment sitting under the water. often at enormously huge depths.

And those charged with taking care of this equipment and carrying out any repairs it may need are known as saturation divers. And as if working on an oil rig wasn't dangerous enough, it's the saturation divers who are by far at the most risk to the point where if you watch or have watched the last breath, you will know,

what I'm talking about, to be a person that does that job. And you know who I'm talking about. I think there has to be something very wrong with you. It's really, really, really dangerous. And that's because saturation divers go to the most extreme depths. And this, of course, poses lots of issues. Not only does the pressure exerted by the weight of all that water above you put a huge strain on your body, it also causes a build-up of gases inside your body.

And the deeper you go, the more gas that builds up. Basically, at the surface where we experience one atmosphere of pressure. We breathe in air, we breathe it out, no problem. Well, unless you're having a panic attack or something. Unless that's happening, generally speaking. Yeah, when everything's going okay. You're absolutely fine. However, at depth, that gas that you breathe,

stays inside your body. And as the atmospheres we experience increase, so as you go further deeper into the water and basically due to the crushing weight of the water, it becomes hard and harder for your body to expel this gas. So it stays in your bloodstream. And in particular, nitrogen builds up in the blood vessels. And this is because the high pressure compresses molecules of gaseous nitrogen and causes it to be dissolved into the bloodstream. So the deeper you go and the longer you stay down there, the more nitrogen gets dissolved into your bloodstream. Surprisingly, that's not actually a problem while you're still at whatever depth you've swam

down to. It becomes quite a large problem when the diver decides they have to go back up to the surface. If the diver comes up too quickly, the gas is a guy. gases contained under pressure in their blood instantly form into bubbles and they expand. This is the example that is always used, but it is the perfect explanation. Imagine shaking up a bottle of Coke and then taking the lid off. All that gas contained under pressure while the lid was on, now fizzes out of the bottle, we've all seen it 100 times.

That's what happens inside a body of someone who comes back up from a a great depth too fast. It's also called decompression sickness, but you've probably most likely heard it called the bends. Which is just such like, it just sounds like such a horrific old and timey thing. I know it's not

just like a disease anyone catches, like your very specific circumstances, but it's just so like, yeah. And the bends comes in lots of different shapes and sizes and severities. Some sufferers will have aches and pains, a bit of confusion, but on the more

severe end of things, there are heart attacks, strokes and death. Yeah, and it completely depends obviously on how deep you went, how quickly you came back up, what's going to happen to you? There is a way round it, however. And that is to put divers in a decompression chamber to slowly drop the pressure back down to one atmosphere so all that gas can escape their bodies slowly. But decompression chambers are expensive. The calculation is that for every 100 feet you dive down, it takes one day to reaclymatize.

So obviously that's not going to work for an oil company who want workers to dive down for a day of work. Makes no sense for them to spend a week reaclimatizing. Yeah. So then in the 40s, research has realized, and this is a very, very important and interesting point, is that when the body becomes saturated, this means that the maxes, amount of nitrogen has been absorbed into the bloodstream, no matter how much longer the diver spends at that pressure deep down under the water, it won't make a difference on the diver's physical health while they are down there.

And it also won't add to the time needed for their eventual reaclimatization. So, enter the clever new diving technique of saturation diving, and it was an absolute game changer for commercial diving, because it allowed for hugely extended periods of time that divers could work at depth. On the Bifid Dolphin, divers were now able to spend 28 days at 9 atmospheres of pressure and then decompress all in one go at the end of that month

and then re-enter normal life. Essentially how it works is that the divers would live at the surface in a pressurized living chamber and they would go up and down from the ocean to this living chamber in a pod called a diving bell. The diving bell is also pressurized, like the living chamber, and they are both kept at a constant pressure of nine atmospheres, the same pressure as the diver's experience at the drill site. So whether they're at work, drilling down at 20,000 feet, or whether they're in the diving

bell, or whether they're in their living chamber, for that entire 28 days, they are kept at nine atmospheres of pressure. So this ensures that for the 28 days, they are working in one go, wherever they are nine atmospheres is the environment at all times. Not only is this sort of work lonely, boring and hardgoing, it's incredibly dangerous. If you are a saturation diver working on an oil rig like the Byford dolphin, you are essentially dragging yourself around in water with extremely poor visibility, trying to do construction and engineering work while dressed in a clumsy suit that basically is just a giant rubber glove. But that's why, if you don't mind all of the risks and the soul-crushing reality of sharing a tiny chamber with a bunch of other people for weeks on end, you can rake it in. Saturation divers are some of the best paid people in the whole world, earning between $250,000 and $500,000 a year. And you only have to work for six months a year.

You do have to have a silly little voice, though. Yes, you do, because they breathe in like a mix. It's not just the air that we breathe in at one atmosphere. They make a special, like, trimix for them. And helium is one of the gases that is quite prominent in this mix that they give saturation divers when they're down in the bell and the living chambers. And Hannah's right. All these big burly men speaking in incredibly high-pitched voices.

Don't even talk about it in the last breath. They're like, yeah, it's funny for like the first 10 minutes. And then you just have to deal with it. Yeah. But still, only about one in 10 commercial divers are saturation. divers. According to some statistics, we found for the 2000s, one in seven saturation divers die on the job. The Bifid Dolphin had a crew of four such saturation divers, and I don't like those odds. These divers were responsible for operating on the submerged parts of the rig, and they operated at depths of up to 300 foot,

with nine atmospheres of pressure bearing down on them for weeks. And it was on the 5th of November 1983, on the Byford, that a four-man team of saturation divers were based. At around 4 a.m. that morning, the two Brits, Edwin Arthur Coward, and Roy P. Lucas, were asleep in one of the chambers. The two Norwegians who made up the team, Bjorn Bergeson and Trolls Helvick, were just coming up in the diving bell after a long shift. two tenders, which is the name given to like diving assistants, Martin Saunders and William Crammond were on hand to help. So Martin and William basically dock the diving bell to the living chambers using a device called a trunk, which is essentially a tunnel.

And the way it's meant to go is that you lock in the trunk, pressurize it to the same atmospheric level as the diving bell and the chamber, which here was nine atmospheres, and then you open up the doors to make the trunk accessible, and then you have the divers crawl through the trunk into the living chambers. That's how it's meant to go. And then once the divers are in the living chamber, they close the door to the trunk,

and then it's depressurized. This is very important. It's depressurized before the diving belt is detached. This all has to be done in a very specific order to avoid pressure differences causing an excessive. The diving bell must not be depressurised until the trunk is sealed. Or all of the living chambers will also be depressurised. So can you guess what happened?

Well, the Norwegians came up in the bell and the attendants attached the trunk. Trolls and Bjorn headed through that trunk into the living chamber. And then trolls began to close the circular door connecting the trunk and the living chamber. It was almost closed But then suddenly For reasons we will never know for sure One of the diving tenders, Crammond,

Undid the locking collar that connected the trunk to the bell The space outside the trunk and the bell was one atmosphere of pressure Because they were at the surface But everything inside the trunk, the bell and the living chambers Were at nine atmospheres of pressure So this instant and sudden depressurisation caused the diving bell to fly off and it hit Crammond as it did so and killed him.

But giving what's to come, that's not a terrible way to go. The impact also knocked Saunders down. He broke his back and half the bones in his body. He would survive. But he was the only one of the six that did. I actually think. that Saunders has the worst outcome. Everyone is really bad, but like, and yes,

Saunders is the only one who survives, but he is the one I would have wanted to be at least, because he is battered and it takes years for recovery. Everything we're about to show you about what happened to everybody else is horrible, but at least it was fucking over quickly. Because the pressure dropped from nine atmospheres to one atmosphere, instantaneously, in the living chambers. I read an example that you know when you're in the plane,

and that's a pressurized cabin, obviously, otherwise wouldn't be flying, that pain you get in your ear, or like that blocking sensation, that's caused by a difference of a quarter of an atmosphere. This is a change in nine atmospheres. And so, yes, as you will remember from what we just told you earlier in this episode, such a decompression procedure from nine to one should have taken up to five, five days to allow the built-up nitrogen gases in the bodies of those men to seep out slowly. As this didn't happen, the gas bubbled in the blood vessels of Bjorn, Lucas and Coward.

And they all died. Their blood essentially flash boiled as the dissolved gases in their bodies and blood streams expanded nine-fold. The result was that their blood bubbled up as if it was boiling, with the autopsy report stating that around major blood vessels, quote, large amounts of free fat were found. This fat was mixed with gas bubbles and looked like sizzling butter on a frying pan. Essentially, they'd all exploded on the inside. But from the outside, their bodies looked very much intact.

We can't say the same thing for trolls. He was, if you recall, in the process of closing the door between the trunk and the living chambers. But there was still a crescent-shaped five-inch gap in the door when the trunk was depressurised. And as the pressure moved from the living chamber

into the trunk, because high pressure always wants to move into areas of low pressure, it took trolls with it, with a force equivalent to roughly 25 tonnes. It's basically like somebody just shot a ginormous battering ram at trolls as he's standing in front of this door that he's desperately trying to close. And that meant that his insides got sucked out

and trolls was folded in on himself and then sucked through that five-inch gap, stomach first. As he was pulled through this hole, the force tore him open and threw his internal... organs onto the deck of the rig. I mean, if they were any lower than the surface, they never would have fucking found him. Oh, no chance, no chance.

And this next bit I'm going to read for all of you is an excerpt taken from Trull's autopsy. The scalp with long blonde hair was present, but the top of the skull and brain were missing. The base of the skull was a collection of tiny bone fragments only. The soft tissues of the face were found. however, completely separated from the body just below the shoulder joint. The upper right arm was torn to pieces, but still attached to the body.

Both hands had been separated from the lower arms. The right thigh, leg and foot were missing, but the knee joint was found. The left thigh had been separated from the pelvis just below the hip joint. The pelvis itself had been divided into three parts. To one of these parts, a small segment of the small, bowel was attached. The penis was present, but invaginated. What does that mean?

It basically means... Inside out? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I have read reports that, essentially, Charles's face. The skin on his face had been torn off and was found like some sort of ghoulish mask on the deck of the rig.

By his colleagues who were just like, what were the fuck was that explosion coming running down and just see the reports like from the men on the rig when they come down is just like there is just like matter sprayed everywhere. It is so ghoulish that if you put this in a like TV show you just be like, it's so macab. And we've got some more autopsy for you and it's my turn. The soft tissues of the abdomen and the back had been cut straight through at a level about midway between the umbilicus and the pelvis.

The soft tissues formed an empty sack. From above, one could look down through the larynx. All the thoracic and abdominal organs had been expelled, except the trachea and a fragment of the small bowel, even the spinal column, and most of the ribs had been expelled. The liver had been found somewhere on the deck. It was complete, as if dissected out of the body. The remains of this diver

were sent to us in four plastic bags all parts showed fractures and wounds barking out it's a lot and yeah the only blessing is that it's unlikely that Charles, coward Lucas or

Bergenson felt a thing it would have all been over within milliseconds they wouldn't have even been aware what was happening in all likelihood before it was all over The man who survived, Saunders, probably suffered the most pain with his miry had broken bones after being hit by the diving bell. Because it's not like a little pod. It's a ginormous metal capsule that has to be able to withstand that level of pressure.

But us sitting here saying that those men probably didn't feel a thing, probably little comfort to the families of those who died. And of course, a full-scale investigation into what has. happened was immediately launched. And at first the Norwegian government, and the company it owned, who managed the Byford, Comex, decided that they weren't to blame. Yeah, so just to be clear, it's not like specifically state run, but the company that managed the Byford is owned by the state, so it is essentially state run. The government and the company they own blamed Crammond squarely for everything who went wrong. He was the diver tender who unlocked the collar.

And, yes, he did make a catastrophic mistake that he paid for with his life. But we don't know how it happened. It is likely that the crew were all exhausted. The company had actually lobbied the government to allow them to work the divers longer than the industry standard eight-hour shifts. Yeah. He had literally, like, gone to the Norwegian government. Who owns the Bifid Dolphin to be like, eight hours really not cut now?

Can we work? I'm like 14? And the government were like, oh, company we own asking that? Yeah, of course you can. Don't worry about it. Additionally, there was a storm raging that night. So it was extremely loud, according to everyone. And the divers and the tenders were all shouting to each other to communicate. It seems that something like this happening, something like this going so catastrophically wrong, was just a matter of time.

Especially when you consider that the year before, a new collar had been mandated on all other oil rigs. And this new collar came with new clamps that were impossible to remove while the trunk was under pressure. That feels like something that should always have been like that. Doesn't it just? But for some reason, The Biford was told that they could just fit these new clamps when they got round to it, when they got a chance, even though all other royal rigs had been told they had to do it immediately. So chidovel. Yeah.

And look, if pressure-resistant ramps had been fitted and used on the Bifid Dolphin, this horrible incident would never have happened. But there were also other safety measures that other rigs had introduced, like gauges on the outside of the structure so that the pressure could be seen by the temperature. tenders. Like this is so important. The tenders are on the outside. They're not in the living chambers or in the trunk or in the diving belt. They're on the outside on the surface of the rig and they're basically just helping maneuver the trunks into place. But there are no gauges on the bifur dolphin outside so they can only hear the men inside yelling to them. Like, you know, we've closed the door, you can take the collar off now. Like if they could see the pressure gauge, they never would have unclipped it. And remember, like you said, there's a fucking storm raging.

They can barely hear anything anyway. It is honestly, it's just so infeful. Also, another thing that other oil rigs had introduced was coloured traffic lights that would just indicate when doors were open and closed. If there had just been, like, a green light or a red light or whatever, indicating that trolls was yet to fully close that door, Cremond's never taking that fucking collar off. It's just so obvious. And if these had all been installed, the exhausted divers and tenders would not have been left, depending on verbal communication in the middle of a raging storm to, you know, keep them all alive and avoid a massive explosion.

And worst of all, the Norwegian government knew all of these issues on the Bifid Dolphin existed. And they also knew, very importantly, that all of these solutions existed. But they admitted them all from their initial report. The victim's families barely got any payouts because the government and comics were deemed blameless by themselves. Yes. And Ruth Crammond, the wife of the tender. who pulled the collar, was forced to flee her hometown of Edinburgh because of all of the hate she was getting.

And it would be 26 years later in 2008 after a lengthy lawsuit and independent investigation that finally it was made clear that faulty equipment was really to blame. The families of those who died settled for an undisclosed amount and William Crammond was posthumously exonerated. The lone survivor, Martin Saunders, recovered from his horrific injuries

and went on to become a strong advocate for safety regulations in offshore drilling operations. He transformed industry rules, and rules requiring systems to have fail-safe seals and interlocking mechanisms were brought in for all diving-bell systems. And nothing, like the Byford Dolphin incident, has ever happened again on an oil rig. Which shows again how avoidable it was. But it did take them until 2019 to scrap the Biford Dolphin completely. Yeah, because there were loads of other issues on that, Rick.

It wasn't just this. It was just like continuous. Let's end on some quote-unquote fun facts. The Bifid incident was what's known as an explosive decompression. If you cast your minds back to 2023 and, of course, the Titan sub-disaster, that is the opposite. That's what's known as an implosive compression.

So basically, with the bifered, when the pressure dropped from nine atmospheres to one atmosphere, everything inside the chamber, including what was inside the divers, quite literally, wanted to get outside of the chamber. Because of the change of pressure that way. With the Titan, however, the pressure inside the sub was one atmosphere, like it is at the surface,

while the pressure outside was 400 atmospheres. So when the breach in the Titan sub occurred, everything outside the vessel wanted to get in because as Hannah said, pressure always wants to move from a position of high pressure to a position of low pressure. As a result, the Titan was instantly crushed into itself. Did you listen to the audio when they released it?

I didn't have a listen to it. Me either, I can't. I don't need to do that to my brain. Don't need it. Don't need it. And Hannah, do you know what the most pressure a human being has ever experienced is. The pressure to succeed. Good job.

A diver was sent down to 2,300 feet. That is a pressure of 71.1 atmospheres. I realized I said incorrectly earlier in this episode that the divers were going down to 20,000. That's not correct. The drill bit that they were drilling into for oil was at 20,000. They were at maximum like 300 foot. So 2,000 foot more than that is the max depth we've ever sent some. Are they all right?

I think so. I think they were alright. I don't know how. God. I know. It's actually just so terrifying. Yeah. Bad, bad, bad stuff.

But yeah, why you people do it, it's a lot of money. And if you have the right, like, personality makeup for being that risk-taking, being able to kind of probably disassociate a little bit while you're down there. Yeah. I know a lot of people who work on Ricks. I've just never met an actual diver. Yeah. It's very intense.

And sounds like a nightmare. Oh, God. No, thank you. But that is the story of the Bifah Dolphin. And now you guys know about what is considered the worst ocean death. I think it's the worst ocean death in terms of just like the gruesomeness of it. And the kind of like, not folklore exactly, but like imagine how that story would be told. Right.

I can assume a lot of rig people know each other. There's like a community there and just imagine the story that crew would have had to tell of when they found Charles's body or what was left in it. shocking stuff. But like I said, the only thing we can say that's good is that probably none of them even knew it was happening before it was done. And it's so interesting that that's had the Biford Dolphin bin in space, exactly the same thing would have happened. Yeah. I will stick to one atmosphere of pressure and one atmosphere only.

Thank you very much. Sounds like a solid plan. It's actually a bit too much. Yeah, it's enough. If anything, as Hannah said too much. So enjoy yourself. Stay safe. Stay out of the ocean.

And we'll see you next time for another short hand. Goodbye. Goodbye.