The Arctic Explorer Disaster
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I remember Chris said "Barry didn't make it", and "the Captain went down with the ship".
Saint John's main street, with the colourful houses, and the road running off down to the edge of the water, sunny, but you could see your breath: June 17th , 1981. Toured Memorial University Campus, taxi back to the airport, and boarded a Bell Jet Ranger to fly to the 93-tonne, class 1A1 icebreaker, the Arctic Explorer, off the northeast coast of Newfoundland.
My friend, and roommate, Gord Saby had given me a lift to the Airport in Calgary, my home town. Gord and I met at the University of Alberta, studying physics and math. He had a propensity for pyrotechnics, and went on to a career in aeronautical engineering. He even introduced me to my future wife, Cathie, the love of my life. Gord pulled up to the departure level, and I got out of 'Dick the Datsun', his rusting beater, and we said goodbye.
Fish out of water: that was me, a 24 year old junior geophysicist working for British Petroleum, shy and anxious, and wondering how the hell I got into this. I'd been in a helicopter a few times, being ferried back and forth from a small town to a seismic project, near Ram River in central Alberta, so the flight was sort of familiar, and fun. Spotting a beached whale in a cove on the Avalon Peninsula, and tiny homes on narrow jutlands, surrounded by the raging sea, as we flew below a heavy overcast . As we left the coast into open water, we lost all sight of land, and in the far distance we saw and approached the Explorer, first a tiny spot , then a metal hull in a vast expanse of rolling seas and wind blown chop, and closer we got: the pilot spoke, "I told them to run into the waves, not to worry about the wind direction... keep really low when you get out, if the deck heaves I may have to take off quickly and the blades could get close to the deck, oh yea, don't take the red bag, it's got all my survival gear in it". The Explorer was heaving as the swells ran an awkward angle to her course. The last junior geophysicist was so seasick, that he was being evacuated by our helicopter, and I was his replacement. I knew Robert from the office and I briefly greeted him on the deck as we crossed paths, he was thin and shaky, and wished me good luck. He looked at me as he lifted off, giving that smile of some who knows what you're in for.
I made my way off the heli pad, the light was failing, and was met by Chris Martin, the onboard birddog for BP. Tall and bearded, maybe 40 years old, and a broad smile. He was engaging and confident and made me feel at ease with his british accent and a wry sense of humour. Besides Robert, there was another ship mate who was also subject to the 'way of the waves'. Chris and the crew nicknamed him 'Bobby Sands' because no one saw him eat during his two weeks aboard.
The Arctic Explorer, my home for the time being, was a steel hulled, 50 meter long hulk, outfitted to record marine seismic data. Cutting edge computers , long arrays of airguns dragged behind the boat that produce a shock wave that sends an explosive pulse through the water and into the underlying seafloor and further underground thousands of meters. These airguns run at 2000 psi, that's enough to take a finger off, or maybe an arm, if you're not careful when testing them. A streamer, a long cable with wires from the hundreds of geophones tailing out over a kilometre behind the vessel, record the echo from the airguns to map incredible details of the underlying strata (the land under the sea). This is how explorers determine where to drill 3 kilometre deep holes into the seafloor to extract oil, such as Hibernia, Terra Nova, Hebron and Bay du Nord. Thousands of jobs were created from top scientists at University's and technical Institutes, business leaders negotiating with governments, first nations and communities and finding the significant capital, engineers, geologists and geophysicists, trade workers and all the people that support, house, feed and comfort them.
I mentioned 'cutting edge computers', this was 1981, liquid helium cooled super computers like the Cray were just being developed, and ever smaller IC chips with quicker clock speeds led the way to digital recording of terabyte's of data. The company running the research vessel was GSI, Geophysical Services Incorporated, their research group developed the fastest and most sensitive amplifiers and recording devices, thanks to a spinoff company, Texas Instruments. TI produced the world's first silicon transistor, and invented the integrated circuit ; pretty good for a company founded by a geophysicist in 1930, J. Clarence Karcher.
My first night was disorienting, heaving ship, cramped quarters, and an unexpected room mate. Gilbert, Barry Gilbert. He was accommodating and friendly, I was thankful he was. We shared a large cabin by marine standards, about 8' by 10', with a desk and a bunk bed. I got the upper bunk and started writing a diary. I was uneasy, but fell asleep quickly. Barry was the GSI rep, and party manager. That's the guy who tells everyone what to do where and when, only rarely actually managing a party.
You probably used your phone to find a restaurant or bar today. You probably know your phone uses GPS, the Global Positioning System to tell you where to go. You may not know that the system became operational in 1993.
June 18th, 1981, we are trying to calibrate a land based navigation system to determine where the heck we are. The system is pretty cool, you physically set up radio frequency transmitters on points of land as close as possible to where you want to record the seismic data, and where you can position a boat exactly between them. The points on land are surveyed in by conventional methods, like finding an old church or road that has a survey marker, and spotting a radio transmitter by theodolite and strapping . By sending out a radio wave at a specific frequency, a small detector made out of nothing but a magnet and coil of wire suspended around it that can measure a signal from miles away, and can be used to find the distance of the Explorer from that point (sort of). By installing two, or three of these transmitters one can use hyperbolic geometry to determine the exact position of the ship(sort of). To record seismic data, it's important to know where you are, and to the accuracy of a few meters, or the data will be unreliable or unusable. This is not easy, it's actually really difficult and tricky. You position the ship as close as you can between two of the installed transmitters with radar, a compass, binoculars and a good chart. As the Explorer moves away from that position, the radio waves from the transmitters actually interfere with each other, creating a repeatable 'beat' pattern that represents about 20m of distance. By counting the beats you can get a very accurate estimate of your position, but the signal fades, the ionosphere in the evening reflects radio signals from all over the world that overwhelm the transmitters , and somebody loses count, and it took us 4 days to get to the right spot.
Can we talk about smell? I can smell a foul odour from across the sea. As a child I was what you would call a 'picky eater'. I had great distain for peas, broccoli, beans, fish, cheese, olives, and any salad , I still do. I grew up on hamburgers, ketchup only, and honey sandwiches. Well, the Arctic Explorer was a vast new collection of sour taints and sickly sweet combinations of fried fish and diesel fuel. One of the 'treats' that arrived with me and the helicopter was salted cod. The crew devoured it, but I can still remember the acrid smell, from the imbibers, intentionally breathing on me, as they reveled in the fresh bounty. Barry and I abstained. One evening I actually felt hungry and wondered off to the mess late at night, no one around, but the cook left out coldcuts and bread to make a sandwich. I assembled a ham and cheese (felt I was pushing myself) and bit in. Odd flavor, kind of medicine like? looked at the bottom slice, and it was covered in blue mold. I went hungry.
Can you imagine the combination of partially burned diesel, a urinal at a gas station, and Ivory soap? as you lurch across a wet steel floor in a large communal shower chamber with no portholes, water that smells worse than the room? and try to come out a bit cleaner? no you can't, and be thankful.
A member of the recording crew had a guitar with him, and kindly let me play a few tunes, a 'Yes' song and 'Stairway to Heaven' and I made a few friends, and probably some enemies. Someone played Pink Floyd's Meddle and it filled the doghouse. Barry had some cassette tapes in our shared quarters, and played me his latest acquisition, Zenyatta Mondatta, by the Police, and I loved it from the first time I heard it, we listened to it a lot. AC/DC and Fleetwood Mac Live made the waves seem smaller, and the time go by faster. Barry was one of the good guys, funny and clever, I hoped we had started a friendship in those two weeks together.
The Explorer had some issues, the engine starting leaking oil into the bilge, not so much to kill the beast, but enough the Captain decided to enter a sheltered bay, Niger Sound, on the Labrador coast, to attempt repairs. The sky waves were making survey calibration impossible anyways. Some of the crew assembled at the bow of the ship to drop anchor in a shallow cove. If we could anchor, we could shut down the engines to repair the leak. No amount of winching, lubricating and hammering with weapons you might see in 17th century warfare could dislodge the rusted and seized anchor chain, and we abandoned that plan, bleeding oil into the sea for the next leg. Sea Doors are large, made of solid steel, and act as a way to prevent taking on water in high seas. Separating regions of the ship to ensure it can't sink. If you have ever been on a cruise, you may have noticed them, but for passenger ships they are generally hidden from obvious view, nonetheless, they are tested and work when needed. On the Explorer they were the large oval doors like you see in submarine movies. They also would have made moving from the doghouse to the rest of the vessel time consuming and annoying: I never saw them closed.
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, even two weeks in isolation could not get me through that book, no idea why it's a classic. (although the idea of predicting missile strikes by erection was intriguing). Shogun was fun.
We sailed by many icebergs. These giants slowly drifting in the Gulf Stream, as the warm water passes the glaciers of Greenland, calving off huge chunks of ice and moving southward into iceberg alley. We were right there. On the bridge we used a sextant to measure the angular diameter from the sea to the peak of the berg. Our radar showed us the distance the berg was away from the ship, so with some simple geometry we calculated the bergs height. We estimated the shape, most of them pyramid like, and figured their volume. Okay, some math! height 60 metres, width and length about the same, your handy volume equation for a pyramid is l(length) X w(width) X h(height) / 3. So about 72,000 cubic metres of ice. Now ice is slightly less dense than liquid water (that's why your cubes float), about 93%. so this chunk of ice weighed in at 670,000 tons. The Explorer tipped the scales at 991 tons, hmm, who would win a collision? Then the first mate said ' you know only ten percent of the whole thing is above water, that thing weighs over 6 million tons I figure. Okay, lets steer clear. It would be the same as running aground on a rocky coast. But that's not the real danger, the real danger is the bergy bits, the smaller pieces that ride low in the water, too small to be detected by the radar, but big enough to pack a punch, growlers. We took turns on watch, but at night it was a crap shoot. No, we didn't talk of the Titanic.
Yesterday seemed to take up a lot of time as I am now waiting with bated breath to get off this boat.
I was getting giddy.
2.
If you have ever been on a dry ship for two weeks, or a month, then landfall presents an opportunity to catch up, and we did. After some back and forth maneuvering, missed line throws and much cursing the Explorer docked at St. Anthony, the northern tip of Newfoundland. I, Barry, Chris, and all of the crew headed down the gangplank to the dock, and oddly, there were many waiting pickup trucks, which we poured into the back of, without a word spoken, that drove us to the favoured bar, where many drinks of rum were consumed with great gusto and intent, to falling down, laughing, and begging the barkeep to sell us a bottle after closing time, offering a months wage for a two six, to no avail. Arrghh, we reveled like pirates.
It was my last night aboard the Explorer.
From St. Anthony
Rent a car and drive to Deer Lake 417 kms. 5 hours. hangover.
Board regional flight King Air to Gander 2 hours plus waiting time. easing hangover.
Gander to Halifax late at night 2 hours. no memory.
Halifax to Toronto morning flight arrive midday 3 hours. clearing head.
Toronto to Calgary long wait 5 hours, overnight to YYC airport. worried.
Taxi to Sunnyside home. Driver gave me dating tips.
I arrived home about noon on July 5th, 1981.
Just as I put my bag down, the phone rang. It was my roommate, Gord, calling. He was out of town for the weekend. He seemed surprised that I answered. He said, ' you were on a ship off the east coast right?'. I said yes. He said 'the Arctic Explorer?'. I said yes. 'Well apparently it's missing, are you all right?'
I was shocked, I had not been in contact with the office since I had left St. Anthony, two days ago. I thought it must be a different ship. I phoned my supervisor at BP, Bob Springs, as soon as I got off the phone with Gord. Bob had not heard a thing about the sinking. He must have worked his way up the chain of command at BP in a hurry because he confirmed the sinking and that they were searching for survivors. He called me back and asked me to meet with him, the VP, and the president first thing in the morning. I obliged. The president said 'well, glad to see you're alive, did you notice anything unusual while you were aboard?' I told them about the sea doors, and the trouble with the anchor, but said the crew seemed capable, noting my inexperience in these matters. I was never asked again about the event.
The Arctic Explorer left port at St. Anthony at 5:30 am on July 2nd, 1981. Having resupplied last night, with a crew not at its best. Many pallets of gear and food and libations remained on the upper deck as the Explorer cast off into calm seas and the dawn light. An easy push through the harbour, and then into the rolling seas of the North Atlantic. Have you ever noticed how the Atlantic seas are grey and tumbling, versus the bright blue of the Pacific surf? The grey of the Atlantic has a morose character, conjuring images of darkness and depression, the inevitability of life and time waiting for no one. As Conrad wrote, 'The sea, she is a harsh mistress'.
At 7:30 am Chris, a seasoned birddogger on many seismic vessels, awoke, sensing the ship was moving oddly, he ran to the engine room, meeting the Captain along the way. The ship was listing and taking on water, and by the time Chris got back up to the deck the Explorer was on her side, gathering with the crew they assessed the situation, the lifeboats on the port side were already under water, and the starboard side at too steep an angle to be launched. It was starting to look like everyman for himself. The Captain had returned to the bridge and grabbing the shipwide mic ordered 'Abandon Ship'. The Captain then stopped the engines, and steered the Explorer to provide a windbreak for the crew, who were jumping into the 3 degree water, mostly in jeans and t-shirts.
At 8:00 am, at GSI's office in St. John's, the manager tried to establish communications with the Explorer, but no contact was made. It was considered normal operation as they knew the Explorer had just set sail and the crew would be busy operating the vessel. No one thought anything of it.
The first mate had located the two, twenty man inflatable rafts, and with help got them onto the leeward side of the ship, as the Explorer continued to slowly twist and heave further and deeper into the sea. The first mate hesitated, and Chris nudged him into the water, they grabbed the raft containers and struggled to pull the painters, lines that activate the pressurized gas into the rafts to inflate them. With much difficulty, both rafts were inflated, and all nearby pulled themselves aboard. Freezing cold, shivering, losing feeling and judgement, they attempted to maneuver the raft to pick up their crewmates, bobbing and trying to swim in the roiling water, two oars were found on each raft and the men desperately paddled towards the closest men as their strength faded. They gazed back at the Explorer as she went out of sight. As one survivor noted: The Arctic Explorer disappeared like a Dinky Toy being swallowed up by the sea, it made you feel quite vulnerable. Coiling and throwing the longest line they had to the men struggling in the water, retrieving a few, but then finally the wind pushed the rafts beyond the length of the rope and there was nothing to be done.
32, that's a round number. 19 is worse, 13 is unimaginable.
The first mates raft began to deflate, some puncture in the skin from the tumultuous pounding of the sea, maybe a set of keys in someone's pocket, maybe an instinctive kick from a floundering tar. There was no repairing it in the trespassing salt water. The two rafts met and all who were able boarded the last usable raft. Barry was not on board.
Two, twenty man rafts, and then only one. 19 survivors, and 13 lost, no one talks of the terrible loss.
At 8:00 pm, GSI tried to contact the Explorer, but no contact was made. It was considered normal operation as the crew must have been busy at that time. No one thought anything of it.
It became apparent that no one was searching for them. Everyone got sick, but with the covered raft you couldn't lean overboard to throw up. The crew were in inadequate clothing, so they shared what they had to keep everyone 'not too much exposed'. A GSI manager was freezing cold and terrified, he began to rant and rave, 'we're all lost', 'I don't want to die', 'do something'. To the point where the crew had to sedate him, perhaps they had a better chance if he wasn't aboard. It was a desperate situation. As the light faded, and darkness set in, they fell into a stupor, the constant swells, the tipping side to side, and the fear was palpable. Then, over the noise of the wind and waves Chris heard a crashing sound. As he regained awareness he realized he was hearing surf hitting landfall: they must be near a shore line, probably Belle Island, or the coast of Labrador. Suddenly hope, and then the immediate realization that crashing onto a rocky shore in the dark was likely the end for them all. Thankfully they drifted away from the sound. No one slept after that.
At 8:00 am, GSI tried to contact the Explorer, but no contact was made, It was considered normal operation as the crew must have been busy recording seismic data. Someone thought there might be something wrong.
The crew was thankful at the first light of dawn. They opened the hatch and saw land in the distance, and the crew rallied to paddle towards it, but a wind came up and pushed them away, morale dropped and everyone went silent.
Shortly after 9:00 am, GSI called Search and Rescue Emergency Centre in St. John's. which in turn notified the Halifax Rescue Coordination Centre at 9:46. Within the hour a Buffalo aircraft had taken off from Summerside P.E.I., and a helicopter was aloft out of Gander, tracking the route of the Arctic Explorer.
'Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?' Gordon Lightfoot.
The day progressed slowly, there was some discussion of how to ration the small amount of food and water that the raft had in its stores. There was something else though, Chris knew it, and now the crew was starting to think the unthinkable, the ship had sunk two days ago, but they were nowhere near where the Explorer was scheduled to be today, or even yesterday. If they didn't know we sunk just 4 hours out of St. Anthony, they won't be looking anywhere near here.
3.
The Captain was conscientious, and after realizing the ship was in danger, assessed the situation and made his decision. The ship was sinking, fast, and he was responsible. He told Chris to get the crew off the ship, and launch any rafts they could get to. He made his way down to the bridge. Sideways, partially submerged and taking on water, the Cap called in an SOS, a MAYDAY, to all who might be listening. The cabin filled quickly, and there was no escape.
Early in the morning, when the ionosphere still acts as a mirror to radio waves, a kid in Bonavista was using his dad's shortwave radio, tuning into many standard hailing frequencies, he hoped to catch some reflected waves from far away, maybe Europe, or Africa. But a fairly loud emergency call saturated the band. An SOS, a MAYDAY, from some ship in the arctic? The signal ended, and the kid did a wonderful thing, he actually called the coast guard and told them what he heard. They took it seriously, but no ship or vessel had been reported late or missing at that time, so they had no lead to go on where to mount a search and rescue mission. They noted the call and continued monitoring, but the SOS the coast guard heard could have been from anywhere in the world.
The raft was still afloat. It was the only thing keeping us from a watery death. It was a life altering time, it kept going on and on, with little to break the monotony of a shared dread. 'Everyone's got a will eh?' Thankfully some gallows humour from the first mate. No land in sight, light starting to fade again, with only the slight calming of the wind as day turned to night. The waves increased as the full darkness of the skyless night enveloped the tiny raft in the vast sea.
The Buffalo and the Chinook helicopter laid out a grid to search the last known position of the Arctic Explorer. The area was huge as there was no way to know when or where she went down, and they flew back and forth across a hundred square nautical miles until the night arrived. Nothing to report, will resume in the morning.
Pina colada, mai tai, hula girls, and a big juicy steak, Chris's dream ended abruptly as he heard surf from his slumber, again, hope, land in sight. They paddled with all their might, but the wind pushed them further out to sea.
At 11:41 am that morning the Buffalo reported sighting a raft five nautical miles east of Cape Bauld.
Chris was waiting, and as he waited the distant sound of a rotary engine aircraft overtook the wind and wave and grunting sounds in the raft. He worked his way over to the hatch and pushed it open. Scanning the gray sky he imagined the little twitches in his eyes and the floaters were planes. he tried to focus, the sound was getting louder. Chris thought he was going to miss it. A dim shape appeared in the sky, it was a plane. It was coming closer. The crew started to realize what was happening, and pushed to the hatch. The Buffalo passed over, tipped its wings, and they knew they had been spotted.
It's an amazing thing how believing you are saved from a certain death situation makes one feel as alive as alive, everything is bright and vibrant, a great sense of relief and joy, perhaps a re-birth, or another life altering experience. Everyone of the survivors had a different reaction.
4.
If you get up to St. Anthony sometime on your travels, take a walk up to the dock in the harbour and you'll find a place to sit and think about the 13 lost souls of the Arctic Explorer, in one of the worst nautical disasters in Newfoundland's history.
After an extensive investigation, no specific reason was found for the sinking. A combination of a ship recently resupplied, with significant weight left on the upper deck, the seadoors being left open, a large or rouge wave heaving the ship to the side, and one survivor thinking they hit a small iceberg, or growler. Chris never mentioned hitting anything, just the vessel moving oddly, likely from water already flooding the lower decks. Perhaps the pirate reveling the night before delayed some crewmen from escaping.
Several lawsuits followed, and the families of the lost were compensated in a most cold and calculated way. Interestingly, GSI invoked a precedent case in the trial, that of Ryan vs. White Star: The Titanic. White Star got a favourable damage cap on the compensation of 100 quid per lost life, about a years wage at the time. They argued there was a clause within the passenger tickets that absolved them from liability. GSI argued everyone onboard new and agreed that there was an inherent risk in being at sea in the North Atlantic. Many families waited years for compensation, extending the grief and anger of their loss. Many of the survivors undoubtedly suffered from PTSD, and carry survivors guilt, wondering how they made it, while their brothers did not. The joy of survival is fleeting.
5.
Chris got back to Calgary on July 3rd, Stampede Parade day. He was thin, but well, and still had the broad smile. It was good to see him. Chris asked me to show him around, and of course we went up to the mountains, my girlfriend Cathie joining us as we wondered into the wilderness to enjoy a picnic lunch by a mountain stream. This is when Chris opened up about the incident, it was difficult to hear, and I was overwhelmed by the detail and horror of what had occurred. Seeing Cathie slip on a rock and fall gently into the shallow stream brought a laugh and smile of great and deep relief as Chris seemed to embrace the great power of life and love. It was joyous. I'll never forget that moment.
END