The 'WILDRAKE' diving bell loss - 1979

The 'Wildrake' diving accident took place in August 1979. It claimed the lives of two American commercial saturation divers. During a routine working dive in the North Sea, the diving bell of the diving support vessel 'Wildrake' became separated from its main lift wire at a depth of over 160 metres (520 ft). Although the bell was eventually recovered, its two occupants, 32-year-old Richard Arthur Walker and 28-year-old Victor Francis "Skip" Guiel Jr., died of hypothermia. Sone of the footage used in the making of this programme was filmed in November 1982, on a vessel that I was working on as a diver. We weren't told that the programme was about the Wildrake bell loss, just that it was about oilfield diving. We were annoyed when the programme went out, because they didn't make it totally clear that the companies and people in the working dive spreads had nothing to do with the accident, but I look at it now as quite a decent bit of investigative journalism. Michel Smart's book, 'Into the Lion's Mouth' published in 2014, tells the story in much more detail.