Humber ‘65/66

[sid harmenzon]

An article about humber pilots brought back a memory of an event near Hull.
At that time I served as a 1e asst eng on the 1st craneship of Heerema Sr.
It was in that very first period of offshore in the north sea, the ship named Global Adventerer was a converted 12000 ton tanker. The centertanks were opened and used as holds for materiaal and tools.
Over tanks 1 there was a steampowered crane that could lift about 300 tons !! Now one laughs about that capacity :-)
Anyway on a chilly day we had to unload a crippled A frame, the Atlas, of her load one of her winches, also steam broke down.
For that job ‘we’ decided to put down a jacked simulator to the ones we used to drive into the north sea bottom. The place, the Humber, a bit downstream Hull.
The right moment was at spring tide, we then had the most profit of the difference. The exact location I don’t know, but between banks outside the Shipping route.

We ‘forgot’ asking permission of the local authorities.
So we started driving piles in English soil, of course after some time we had visitors from customs port authorities and more. “ What ever you are doing, its illegal!”
Somehow they were being turned to have merci towards our situation so we could go on with the job.
For keeping the story short, during that operation we were allready alongside the structure, with a complete deck section of a rig on top of it and busy getting it piece by piece down on our deck.
In the dark one of our ancre winches brakes aft, give way and by the springtide current
We were pushed in a ‘wrong position’ against the structure.
We had a tug of United Towing as standby boat, the skipper tried to kept us straigt with no succes and got caught between our ship and the structure, heaved over to one side.

He himself and a couple of his deckhands went overboard, he was rescued because he allways wore a colloured woollen bonnet, he was recognised by scrammbled up collegues by that. The others managed to got out of the water by themselves as far I rememder.
No casualities anyway.

There’s a lot more to it from ship side view, we had a lot trouble getting the piles out of the river as ordered and promised.

I wonder, are there any among the readers who remember this event and are there maybe any pictures left.
Ps
Hope there are not to many faults in this message, my apologies for any.

Sid.