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Excerpted from The History of Oilfield Diving: An Industrial Adventure
by Christopher Swann (Oceanaut Press)
by Christopher Swann (Oceanaut Press)
The first formal diving company in the Gulf of Mexico came into existence in September 1957 when Al Warriner, a native of Panama City, incorporated in New Orleans as Underwater Services.
Warriner’s diving career began in 1938 when the W. Horace Williams Construction Company, which he joined after taking a degree in mechanical engineering, sent him and another diver to the Creole field to salvage a steam-powered construction barge that had sunk alongside a wooden drilling and production platform that was connected to shore by a mile-long bridge.
The equipment Horace Williams provided consisted of a Morse helmet made in one piece with the breastplate, and a hand pump to supply the air. As long as the diving dress did not leak, the diver stayed in the gear all day, eating his lunch through the detachable faceplate. In summer Warriner dispensed with the dress and worked with the helmet resting on his shoulders.
After serving in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Warriner returned to the shipyard work he had taken up after leaving Horace Williams. In 1946, he began making occasional trips to Louisiana to dive in the oilfields, first in the lagoons and waterways, then in the open Gulf. Warriner installed valves, connected pipelines to the small platform structures, and undertook the occasional salvage job. All the work was in water less than 30'/9M deep.
In 1954, Warriner was working on the construction of a tunnel under the Harvey Canal, across the Mississippi from New Orleans. Unlike most diving contracts, which tended to be of short duration, the tunnel kept Warriner busy five days a week, month in and month out.
As it happened, the office of McDermott’s offshore division was near the construction site. Every day at lunch time the McDermott engineers crossed the footbridge that ran over Warriner's head on their way to Phil's, the only restaurant in the area. From time to time Warriner also went to Phil's. One Saturday morning one of the engineers telephoned Warriner at home and told him they urgently needed a diver to cut the piles on a platform they were trying to remove. The tunnel superintendent had already given permission to borrow him.
The platform was in about 90'/27M of water, an exceptional depth at the time, and it was on a dry hole. With mobile rigs limited to the shallows, in deep water oil companies had no choice but to continue to drill exploratory wells from a fixed platform. If the well was dry, or failed to produce in commercial quantities, they uprooted the platform and reused it.
The standard method of removing a platform was to shear off the pilings below the seabed by dropping explosive charges down them. A derrick barge then picked up the platform, and it was towed to the next site. Generally, it was not that simple, however. Depending on the lifting capacity of the barge, it was often necessary first to pull out the piles which, being of much heavier steel than the platform, accounted for half the total weight. Usually the contractor attempted to extract them from the top; but frequently the explosives splayed the metal, making it impossible to get them out. The structure then had to be turned on its side and the piles pulled out horizontally from the bottom. If the piles refused to budge, or they were grouted in place, two derrick barges made the lift. When exploration moved into deeper water and the platforms got bigger, even two derrick barges could not always handle the load.
At two o'clock on the Saturday afternoon Warriner and an ex-navy diver he recruited for the job stuffed their gear into a Widgeon amphibian at New Orleans airport and took off. The pilot, who had been given the wrong information, flew south to the west delta area at the mouth of the Mississippi, instead of heading west to Delcambre: a detour that cost them two refueling stops and a great deal of time. When they finally arrived at Delcambre they boarded the crewboat for the five hour run to the platform and went to sleep.
On Sunday they sat and waited. McDermott had shot off the pilings and laid the platform on its side, but the pilings were stuck. McDermott's two 250-ton derrick barges, the only two of their size in the Gulf, were unable, together, to lift the combined weight of the structure and pilings. The only solution was to lighten the load by cutting off the protruding ends of the pilings.
That evening at sunset Warriner and his partner got in the water with oxy-arc cutting torches to burn off the first of the 40"/101Cm-diameter piles. The depth was no more than 10'-12'/3M-3.6M but the swell made it difficult to hang on. Both divers were using light gear.
Some time before, Warriner had bought a set of Scott scuba equipment for working on the Harvey tunnel. Until then, he had used nothing but heavy gear, but there were places on the tunnel where it was too restricting. Warriner converted the Scott mask to surface supply and put in a one-way telephone so he could talk to his tender.
The telephone now proved its worth. Whereas the other diver had to rely on hose signals to get the current to his torch turned on and off, Warriner gave the word into his microphone. As a result, he cut much more steel than the ex-navy man. Furthermore, rather than hanging on to the outside of the piling and being buffeted by the swell, he climbed inside and cut from the inside out. At the time, burning in an enclosure was considered a dangerous practice—the US Navy prohibited it because of the risk of explosion—but Warriner found it worked.
Warriner and his partner worked all Sunday night, then the derrick barge rolled the platform over and they cut the next set of piles: a procedure that was repeated until all the pilings had been cut. Late on Tuesday evening, Warriner left the barge to return to his job on the Harvey tunnel. By the time he got back to his apartment, with travel time he had made $3,000 in less than four days. On the Harvey tunnel, it took him a week to make $900.
Continued in the next post