Hello, my wonderful friends. It's your Scary Master Noel bringing to you one of my favourite Horror Stories. The Story Of The Byford Dolphin Diving Bell Explosion. A Story that is said to be one of, if not, the most GRUESOME accident in History... This is another Story that I've known for 2 years and it has completely captured my imagination. Especially because it reminds me of the iconic Oil Rig scene from Cars 2. Credit to the YouTuber "Horror Stories" and Wikipedia for the information. Let's take a look at The Story Of The Byford Dolphin Diving Bell Explosion. The most GRUESOME accident in History...

On this day, 40 years ago, on November 5th 1983, 5 men were violently killed, and 1 man was severely wounded from an explosive decompression accident on a Norwegian drilling oil rig in The North Sea known as "The Byford Dolphin" and to this day, it is said by many to be one of, if not THE MOST HORRIFIC and GRUESOME accident in HISTORY...

On this day, 40 years ago, at 4:00 AM on the morning of November 5th 1983, four divers and two diving tenders named Edwin Arthur Coward, Roy Lucas, Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, Truls Hellevik, William Brown Crammond, and Martin Saunders were working on the ocean floor on an oil well when they were told by Bergersen and Hellevik that bad weather was approaching, and it wouldn't be safe in the ocean and they needed to head back to the oil rig. Crammond and Saunders then went into the diving bell that would pull them up to the decompression chambers. The bell was raised to the surface and was clamped to a walkway called "The Deck" which led to the chambers. Bergersen and Hellevik set their gear on the deck and entered chamber one to help open the door for the two men. Coward and Lucas were resting in the second chamber at the time.

Now even though it may seem that it would be pretty simple to connect a diving bell to a chamber and open the door to get out of it, it actually requires very specific steps for the process to be safe, and if these rules aren't followed in the right way and in the right order, the outcomes of the mishaps can be extremely dangerous... The four steps to exiting the diving bell into the chamber rooms go like this. 1. Close the door of the diving bell. 2. A supervisor will slightly increase the bell's pressure to make sure its door seals tightly. 3. Close the door between the deck and the chamber. 4. Slowly depressurize the deck. And 5. Separate the bell from the chamber system. The first two steps were done with no problem, but for some UNKNOWN reason, Crammond released the cramp BEFORE Hellevik closed the door to the chamber! This caused a HUGE explosive decompression to take place! Air RUSHED out of the chamber with TREMENDOUS force! Jamming the interior deck door and pushing the bell away! Crammond was killed and the other diving tender, Martin Saunders was severely injured! All 4 of the divers were killed instantly from the explosive decompression within 9 atmospheres of pressure to one atmosphere in a fraction of a SECOND...

Hellevik was in the process of moving to secure the inner door when he was FORCED through the 24 inch diameter opening of the jammed door! Causing him to be violently dismembered! His abdominal section was SPLIT and his organs were EJECTED from his body except for the trachea, a section of the body consisting of a section of the intestines, and a section of the spine. His insides exploded all over the area... One section was found 30 feet vertically above the exterior pressure door...

During a forensic investigation on all four of the divers, large amounts of fat were found in their arteries, veins and organs. It was later discovered that the rapid change in pressure was so strong, it caused the divers's fat to separate from their blood... The regimortis was unusually strong... All the blood in the divers's organs were a light red and in 2 cases, there were numerous hemoridges in the livers...

The committee investigating the situation came up with two reasons as to why Crammond didn't follow the steps properly which caused the catastrophic accident. The first theory was simply human error. At the time of the accident, the only communication the tenders on the outside of the system had was through a bull horn attached to the wall's surface, with heavy noise added from the rig and sea. The men also worked very long hours during those times. Sometimes up to 16 hour shifts which obviously caused a lot of fatigue and impatience.

The second theory the investigators came up with was the company's failure to build a safe hatch into the system. If failed mechanisms were present, the six men may have been spared their fate.

Built in 1975, The Byford Dolphin was not equipped with fail safe hatches, outboard pressure gauges, or an interlocking mechanism, which would have prevented the deck from being opened while the system was under pressure.

At first, the families of the victims were initially told that the catastrophic blast was an accident caused after air had escaped from the diving bell because gauges had been tampered with. It wasn't until The North Sea Divers Alliance, formed by divers and family members of the victims uncovered the investigation documents in 2008, discovered that the divers were operating with faulty equipment. Roy Lucas's son, Steven was 10 when he tragically lost his father. Roy was a British Citizen when he was working on The Norwegian Oil Rig. Clare Lucas, the daughter of Roy Lucas said "I would go as far as to say The Norwegian Government MURDERED my father. Because they knew that they were working with an unsafe decompression chamber." It took 26 years for Steven and his family to finally receive compensation in 2009 shortly after they filed a lawsuit against The Norwegian Government in 2008.

To this day, 40 years later, The Byford Diving Bell Explosion is said by many to be one of, if not, THE MOST GRUESOME accident EVER experienced in HISTORY and scientists and mechanics are trying as hard as they can to prevent a similar catastrophe from happening like the one that gruesomely took the lives of those 5 people 40 years ago...

The end...