In a tragic incident, five men suffered a horrific death while deep-sea diving 1,000 feet underwater due to a critical error in 1983. The Byford Dolphin, an offshore drilling rig in the North Sea, was plagued by multiple accidents, with the most devastating one resulting in internal organ explosions, blood boiling, and a fatality caused by a diving chamber mishap.
A team comprising four British and Norwegian divers—Edwin Arthur Coward, Roy P. Lucas, Bjørn Giæver Bergersen, and Truls Hellevik—along with tenders William Crammond and Martin Saunders, embarked on a deep-sea mission that required them to undergo compression in specialized chambers for 28 days. These pressurized living quarters, accessed via a diving bell, prevented nitrogen buildup in their bodies during extended periods underwater.
The divers followed a saturation diving technique to avoid decompression sickness, wherein they breathed a specific gas mixture tailored to the dive’s depth to prevent nitrogen and helium absorption. However, a fatal mechanical failure during a routine chamber transfer on November 5, 1983, led to a catastrophic chain of events. Bergersen and Hellevik, assisted by Crammond and Saunders, were returning to the chamber when an unintentional release of the diving bell caused a sudden pressure drop, resulting in the tragic deaths of all five men.
The rapid pressure change caused nitrogen bubbles to form in their bloodstreams, essentially boiling them from within. Hellevik suffered severe injuries, including organ evisceration, while Saunders miraculously survived with collapsed lungs, spinal fractures, and a broken neck. A subsequent investigation attributed the fatalities to human error, although the exact cause of the incident remains unclear, underscoring the critical need for enhanced diving safety protocols.
