Snatched from the Sea

摘要

Aboard the drilling rig Sea Gem, crew members were looking forward to beginning a period of shore leave over the New Year. Fourteen of the normal 46-man crew of the 5,600 ton (5,096 tonne) rig were already ashore for Christmas, three months after pushing the Sea Gem into the nation's headlines as the first North Sea platform to find natural gas in commercial quantities in September 1965. At the beginning of December the first North Sea gas flare had been lit, with the daily gas flow of ten million cubic feet (277,778m~3) predicted to rise to 50 million cubic feet per day in the future.