The salvage of the M V Rockness

Saturday Cinema -The story of the M V Rockness... briefly, a strange type of ship, a 'rock dumper' 550 foot long and weighing over 9000 tons, it'd suck up rocks from near the shore and move them and place them precisely where they're needed on the seabed - often to protect large undersea structures like gas pumping machines and oil pipeline junctions.... sort of like a dredger in reverse but with more finesse... you get an idea of the size of the bastad when you see a helicopter touching down on the upturned hull and as men stand next to the equipment. Anyway, one day as they were in a Norwegian fjord gulping up massive stones and rocks something went drastically wrong and she turned turtle - killing 18 of the 30 man crew :-( Adding even more urgency and pathos to the situation... a seaman was trapped alive in an air-pocket...he was in the very bottom of the ship when she capsized so now he was at the top so to speak and the vid starts (unfortunately not too well filmed) but the first couple of minutes shows as they use cutting equipment to break through the hull to reach him and he was pulled out alive... there is no dialogue as such just a soundtrack of sorts lending the proceedings a certain je ne sais quai. It starts in black and white but soon turns into colour. It's quite long by LiveLeak standards but well worth the time investment and we all like chains nearly as thick as ya leg and 6 inch wire ropes which two men struggle to even pick it up and move... the methods they used to right her are really worth the view. The salvors erected hard pads on land which held massive pulleys which the 5 inch hawsers pulled through and under the casualty and anchored onto hardened points welded onto the hull and the power came from massive pullers on an 600 ton barge parked nearby...it was a mammoth salvage job - and one well executed and one which shows the Salvage Master and his predominantly Dutch crew doing their thing - as they do. as a finale, the ship was towed away repaired and repainted and used as a 'rock installation vessel' similar to it's original usage and renamed as the Nordness. Credit goes to the salvors Smit Tak and the Eide Marine Group and RIP to the the eighteen lost mariners. The salvage took place well after the men's bodies had been recovered and taken back to their respective homes. The lack of dialogue is a nice show of respect.

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