Five men died instantly in an explosive decompression accident on the Byford Dolphin diving bell in the North Sea on November 5, 1983, an event described as some of the most gruesome deaths ever recorded.
The accident involved six men: divers Roy P Lucas, Edwin Arthur Coward, Truls Hellevik, Bjørn Giaever Bergersen, and dive tenders William Crammond and Martin Saunders. They were performing standard maintenance work on the rig at a depth of 295 feet, using saturation diving to avoid decompression sickness.
The men were accommodated in specialist compression chambers for a 28-day deployment and traveled via a diving bell between their accommodation and submerged workstation. The Byford Dolphin was a semi-submersible oil drilling platform that worked in the British, Norwegian, and Danish zones of the North Sea.
According to Daily Record - Main, the accident has been described as some of the most gruesome deaths ever recorded. The accident was caused by human error on the oil rig, but the specific human error that triggered the explosive decompression remains unclear, and it is unknown which of the six men survived or what the exact roles of the dive tenders were during the incident.