Me: Praise God for all his beauty!
Prodigal: Yes, and let’s hear a story of his work.
This is from Derrell John Dore
Located five miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, our steel platform was as remote as an island. On it, our crew worked, ate and slept for days at a stretch while we drilled into the sea bottom for sulphur. A drilling rig can be dangerous place even under normal circumstances. One must continually be wary of thrashing machinery, steel pipes winging past one’s head and whipping snakelike cables. One misstep and a man can be crushed or hurtled to death.
On that Sunday afternoon, June 1, 1975, our platform was being towed to a new drilling location. Hydraulic jacks had hoisted our four thick column “legs” from the sea floor. As they rose the air above us, our 60 by 120 foot watertight platform settled into the water and floated for towing. Ten feet thick, the platform had most of the crew’s living quarters inside it.
It was a bright sunny day as our tugboat slowly pulled us along at three miles an hour. A sharp salt breeze ruffled my khaki work clothes as I stared unseeingly at the blue waters. I was thinking of home and my wife Dorothy. We had five wonderful years together in the little French Cajun town where we lived.
Because Dorothy and I were a praying couple, we attended church together on Sundays and on holy days of obligation. A school of porpoises exploded from the waves, their glistening black bodies arching in graceful formation. I turned my back on them and strode to the stern of the rig to help the other men change a swab line. At this time there was only a skeleton crew of 12 aboard.
As we worked, other men who had labored hard the previous night was sleeping below within the platform. We stopped for a break, and as I leaned against the rail, I looked up.
Something was wrong! The support columns looming over us were angled crazily against the horizon! I gasped as they slowly leaned farther across the sky. My mind groped frantically for some explanation–too much towing speed, a freak wave, some deadly unforseen wind pressure? But there was no time to think.
“We’re going over!” I screamed. Then I remembered the men asleep below.
I leaped down the companionway and raced through the passage to the sleeping quarters. I threw open the door and yelled at the men, then I dashed farther up the passageway to start the pump. A powerful jet of sea water exploded through the wall. I ran back along the tilting passageway to the ladder leading to the deck. Green water roared down at me. I sprang back, hearing the crockery in the galley crash to the floor. We were going over–and I was trapped!
Heart pounding, I thought of an escape hatch in the laundry compartment. I fought my way down the hall; it was like being inside a revolving barrel. Reaching the laundry room, I leaped at the hatch in the ceiling. As I strained at the hand bolts, a man’s cry down the passageway was smothered by a thundering roar. A wall of water exploded into the laundry compartment as I struggled with the hand bolts. They were rusted shut!
The lights flickered, then went out, and icy water surged up my body. In the blackness I fought to open the ceiling hatch, which was now on the “wall” before me. The water covered my shoulders, then swirled around my neck.
As I held my chin above water, words came from my past as I prayed for deliverance. And then, strangely, the water seemed to stop rising.
In the inky blackness and the terrible stillness I seemed to be suspended in time. Desperately I continued to struggle with the hatch, not realizing the whole capsized rig now rested on the sea bottom—some 50 feet below the surface of the Gulf.
I finally let of of the hatch. Treading water, I began to shiver violently in the bone-freezing cold. Feeling around in the dark, I touched a large water pump; its side seemed to be only inches below the water surface. Painfully I hoisted myself up and lay on it. Stretching out my arms, I felt cold steel about two feet on every side of me. I was in an air bubble, trapped in a corner of the compartment.
The pump’s sharp pipes bit into my back as I balanced on it. Would anyone ever find me? Oh, God, would anyone come in time?
The minutes ticked away. I could see nothing. The silenced screamed in my ears. Buried at sea. The phrase rand in my mind like the tolling of some great iron bell. Many men, I knew, had been buried at sea. But I was being buried alive.
Panic surged within me, but I fought it. With my pocketknife I began pounding on the steel side of my coffin. I knew it was futile, but I had to do something. The metallic sound seemed to echo the tolling of the great bell in my mind.
Hours seemed to go by as I clung there. Cramps wracked my body in the icy water. Out of the blackness Dorothy’s face came to me as I had kissed her good-by on Wednesday. Would I ever see her again? The air was now growing hot and I knew I was gradually consuming its oxygen. I breathed as slowly as I could. I gave up pounding with my knife.
How much time had gone by? I could not tell. My chest began to burn. Hallucinations began to haunt me. At one moment I seemed to be back home in my skiff on the bayou. At another I was back in the service on the deck of a Navy assault ship in Vietnam. Guns roared over me and the explosions made my head hurt. At times I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or dreaming. Either way, it was all one nightmare. I grew thirsty and my face perspired in the hot, fetid air. I splashed salt water on my face and tried to think clearly, but it was impossible. Grim questions flashed through my mind. What kind of casket would Dorothy get for me? Would Father Bertrand lead the services?
Suddenly I was aware of a searing pain in my scalp; my hands were clutching my hair, trying to tear it out! I screamed and forced them down. I remembered hearing about people who, when buried alive, had torn their hair out in their death agony.
Oh, God, why doesn’t someone come?
Oh, my Jesus, forgive us our sins, Save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who are in most need of Thy mercy….
In agony I prayed words I had learned as a youngster, words that until now had not had such intense meaning for me.
Oh, my Jesus, forgive us….lead us to Heaven….
Again and again I said the words, but something strange was beginning to happen. No longer was I saying them to empty blackness; I found myself actually talking to Someone. Jesus was there with me. There was no illumination, nothing physical. But I sensed Him, a comforting Presence. He was real; He was there.
I relaxed in the blackness, fear and hysteria draining out of me. With my new-found calmness, I prayed for the other men who, I thought, died when the rig capsized. I found my knife and with a sudden surge of hope again began to tap it against the wall.
Suddenly there was a strange bubbling in the water. I froze. Escaping gas? I held my breath as long as I could, then surrendered, inhaling deeply. It had a strange coolness, a freshness. It was fresh air!
How long I lay there thanking God for this miracle, I don’t really know. All I know is that finally I saw a light, a strange greenish illumination under the water. It moved upward. From it, incredibly, emerged a black, polka-dotted hand. I reached for it.
As if startled, the hand slipped back into the water and the light disappeared. I groaned. Now I realize it had been a skin diver searching the rig. He’d found my compartment seemingly empty and left.
I lay back in despair. But suddenly the strange green light returned. I sat up on the pump. A dark shape materialized under the water and a helmet broke the surface. I beat on it furiously with my knuckles.
Two polka-dotted gloves removed the helmet and a grinning sweaty face said, “If you only knew how happy I am to see you!”
“Oh, God, thank You! I prayed.
After the diver called on his radio for another helmet, I asked him the time. He checked his waterproof watch. “Noon, Monday,” he said.
I had been down there 22 hours.
He explained they had strung air hoses to the submerged platform, hoping that air would find its way to any trapped man.
Led by my rescuer and another diver, and wearing a helmet they gave me, I swam down the passageway and out into the dark gloom of the sea bottom. Slowly we floated upward, the water now paling to an iridescent emerald and getting brighter and brighter.
Finally we broke the surface and I was helped onto a rescue barge. Hands removed my helmet and I was blinded by the brightness of the sun. The first thing I did was fall to my knees on the deck and thank God. The next thing was to ask what had happened to my crew mates. My rescuers told me that four other crewman, trapped together in another compartment, were also saved. Seven other men working above deck when the rig capsized were thrown into the water; one drowned and six were saved.
Later, when Dorothy kissed me at the hospital, she said people all over the country had been praying constantly for all of us.
Daniel 2:22
He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness, and the light dwelleth with him.
Jennifer Van Allen
