It's a project I've sort of piggy backed on since Stuart decided to make a documentary about oil workers in Aberdeen. This developed into an investigation into the Piper Alpha disaster: On the 6th of July, 1988 due to a series of technical and human errors leading to many explosions; the offshore oil platform Piper Alpha was engulfed in flame and fell into the sea.
167 men died as a result. A terrible tragedy.
The loss of human life and the pure horrific drama of the events is stirring.
Books have been written about the disaster, a play has been written and a well received documentary was released this year marking the 25th anniversary of the incident.
BBC's Piper Alpha: A Fire in the Night.
If you want to know more about the incident check out the National Geographic 'Seconds from Disaster'. It's incredibly garish but as a technical overview it gives a clear explanation of events leading up to and after the disaster.
In that particular documentary we get a short interview with Bob Ballantyne; a Glaswegian born electrician that worked in the oil industry after the decline of heavy industry in the Scottish Central Belt. On the 6th of July he was in the movie room when the first explosion occurred.
He survived by ignoring all safety procedures and climbing down the side of the platform, jumping into the North Sea, swimming until he was picked up by the diving support vessel the Lowland Cavalier. After the events of the Alpha he went on to pursue academia and became a teacher.
Ballantyne's name is most mentioned when reading about Piper Alpha, probably due to his help with Lord Cullen's inquiry into the disaster, his public support of trade unions blaming the greed of the oil companies creating the conditions leading to the disaster, supporting survivors and grief stricken families.
Sadly, he died of cancer in 2004.
He comes across as a heroic figure, someone that any storyteller (or anyone in general) would be attracted to and want to learn more about. Which is why Stuart took interest in the man, I suppose, as with such things that can be as huge as an offshore oil platform and the death of many, many men; it is not the facts and statistics that touch us. It is the individual stories of these people.
Aberdeen University had a project Lives in the Oil Industry which ceased in mid 2005 which is a collection of interviews with those who work or had worked firsthand in the oil industry. An interview with Bob Ballantyne lasting somewhere around 7 hours long is available.
Stuart went in with a pen and notepad and set to transcribing.
The story now is about Bob Ballantyne. Bob was incredibly eloquent and very reflective - some of the things he said was incredibly moving and human, even being humorous in spite of the terrible things he experienced.
We plan on creating a visually abstract documentary with the transcriptions being the core narrative; driving the story along, borrowing heavily from the films Black Sun, The Shutdown and The Sound of Insects.
As a writer it's sort of a blessing to be able to work with this kind of source material, in fact my major role in making this film thus far is essentially cherry picking quotes and rearranging them into a narrative; so I thought I'd share some of them:
"The three things we used to talk about prominently was sex.. that wasn't around... football... you couldnae play any football on the platform and the other was drink. So these three subjects that everyone would talk about in their recreation time were the three hundred subjects that you could not participate in. Very strange... I found it absolutely strange."
"I was working 21 days night shift and had this cabin with 12 guys who snored and who passed wind, and read porn [laughs] My ambition was always to find somebody who liked working offshore, so that when they died, I could pickle their brain and put it in a big jar and give talks at galleries and museums in the world of academia to show them that this was a Frankenstein Brain, that this brain was a monster who liked the offshore industry. That is my ambition to this day, I want to get that person! I know that pervert is out there. I want to get him. I know he's out there! [laughs]"
"I still to this day, I have terrible guilt feelings about it. I was told not to use that word desertion, but it keeps coming up in my vocabulary, it keeps coming up in my psyche, that somehow I deserted them."
"...that probably saved my sanity. Pat still thinks I'm off ma heed [laughs]. She says 'You were daft before the piper blew you up, so don't blame the Piper'"
"It was only when we got outside we realised the enormity of it. It was like your worst nightmare come true, it was hell."
He seemed a charming, thoughtful man and it is a shame he passed so young. Hopefully this project will do justice to his memory and the others lost due to the dreadful events on the 6th of July 1988.
All these images I've used without permission. If you are the owner and want me to take it down just message me.
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