M/V Triple Crown (Santa Barbara Channel — 260 fsw)

Introduction

Exactly 57 years ago today (November 25th, 1968), nine people died during the tragic sinking of the M/VTriple Crown….

It was 3:45am with winds at 30 knots and gusting. The ocean was a cold 57 degrees and tumultuous with a 10 foot swell from the west crossing with a 3-5 foot surface wave from the north. The M/V Triple Crown was heavily laden and finishing a job to remove the many tons of anchors and chain holding the Bluewater II offshore oil derrick in place so that it could be moved.

In less than five minutes the Triple Crown would be sitting 260 feet deep on the muddy bottom of the ocean in the Santa Barbara Channel with 9 out of the 25 crew dead.

The Triple Crown has been on my list of SoCal wreck sites to dive for at least 4 years, probably longer. I can report that I finally got to dive the wreck; however, I don’t really know what the Triple Crown looks like given that we had visibility less than 5 feet. 🙂 One So Cal diver who has dove the wreck multiple times of quips “I have dove the Triple Crown many times but I’ve never seen it.”

Unfortunately, this is somewhat typical for this wreck but I thought it was worth documenting and provide a couple very poor pictures of the very small area of the wreck that I “dove by Braille.” I’ll also give a short description and video of what it was like to dive it which some might find interesting.

M/V Triple Crown

The M/V Triple Crown was built at Port Arthur, Texas and was completed in mid 1968. She was transferred to Port Hueneme, California to be used as an oil drilling rig supply ship and anchor handling. She was owned by Caspary-Wendell and chartered to Humble Oil & Refinery and operated by Deepwater Operators.

Before she was used as a supply ship, four of the water ballast tanks were coverted for storing anchor chain (this is important for the accident) and two additional ballast tanks were converted to store fuel oil. Two other tanks were converted to hold domestic water.

She was about 160 feet long with a beam of 40 feet. The most prominent features on the ship are (a) the gantry crane which was used for handling the anchor & chain for the oil derricks and (b) the pilot house.

One of the primary jobs of the Triple Crown was to help with anchor and chain management for the oil derricks in the region. There are different ways to secure an oil rig to the ocean floor. One of them is to attach multiple anchors to the seabed and then attach the chain to the oil rig. The sinking of the Triple Crown happened while they were moving one of the oil rigs

The Accident

There are different ways to secure an oil rig to the ocean floor. One of them is to attach multiple anchors to the seabed and then attach the chain to the oil rig. The Triple Crown was in the process of helping to move and secure the offshore rig, the Bluewater II.

She had set two anchors with chains and buoys in the new location in preparation for the Bluewater II to arrive. She then went to the current location of the Bluewater II which was about eight miles southeast of Santa Barbara and arrived about midnight on 23 Nov 1968. She was picking up the existing anchors so that the Bluewater II could be moved to the new location. The oil rig had two anchors at each of the four corners running at 90 degrees for a total of 8 anchors.

She would first pick up the 10 ton anchor using the gantry crane and then would bring the chain on-board with a winch. Each chain was 3,200 feet long and weighted about 136,000 pounds. The chain would be fed to a wildcat which would then deposit the chain into the tanks that had been converted into chain lockers. The anchor would then be transferred to a tug to make more room on the deck.

Well into the night all day on the 24th of November, she continued to pull up anchors and chains. Just prior to sinking, she had 8 of the 10 ton anchors on deck and about 26,000 feet of chain (that weighed 40-45 pounds per foot). She was almost done with the job and had about 300-500 feet of chain left when one of the anchor-handling crew noticed more water on the deck than normal (remember the 10 foot swells combined with all the weight) and the ship had a starboard list. He actually jumped inside an empty 55-gallon drum to stay dry but that didn’t work as the barrel started to float as the water level increased.

At 3:40am the Captain, George R. Gaskill from Sunset Beach, awoke realizing that something was wrong. He ordered somebody to wake everybody up and to secure the doors to the engine room. The ship continued to list to the starboard and the Captain called the nearby tugs to help. He proceeded to pass out life jackets and went to release the lifeboat when the ship lurched and he was in the water.

According to the official accident report:

The period of time from the first indication that something was wrong until the vessel sank was three to five minutes.

One of the surviving crew indicated that he went to help close the watertight door into the engine room but faced two obstacles (1) water was pouring in a continuous stream and (2) there was an anchor in the way.

The accident report below has all of the details, but I can only imagine the terror of being on that ship at 4am when it sank in 3-5 minutes. Sixteen of the 25 people on-board were rescued from the water by a nearby tug Pacific Saturn. There were nine fatalities and seven of the bodies were recovered from inside the vessel soon after the accident and two have never been found.

There are some interesting notes inside the accident report including

• “No member of the operating crew of the M/V Triple Crown held a U. S. Merchant Mariner’s Document endorsed as Able Seaman”
• The weather was “Clear with good visibility, wind out of the north at 30 knots and gusting. The sea was moderate with a three- to five- foot surface wave running from the north across ten-foot swells from the west.”

Obviously, how much weather affects operations is dependent upon the size of the vessel, etc. but those conditions seem pretty gnarly for doing that type of operation with anchors and chains that weigh that much.

Here is the complete Marine Casualty Report from the U.S. Coast Guard :

In addition to the office report above, there was information and photos supplied in the Coast Guard “Proceedings” issue in November 1969. I’ve extracted the relevant pages from the document and put them below. I have also taken out two of the photos and copied them.

Below are two additional photos of the Triple Crown from the Proceedings:

The wreck was front page news at the time and there were a lot of articles written about it and the heroics of Harold Young who was working on the nearby tug Pacific Saturn and dived into the icy waters to save a man who had gone unconscious and was drowning.

The Wreck

The Triple Crown sits on a soft, muddy bottom in 260 feet of water with the bow towards the northwest and she is relatively level. As mentioned above, the conditions are often poor visibility and dark due to the depth and particulate matter in the water column. The wreck is covered in white metridiums. Also, if you do dive this wreck be very careful: there are lines, ropes, and all sorts of entanglement hazards everywhere so you need to be very careful (especially in low visibility).

If you are looking to dive the Triple Crown and want to do some research ahead of time, I think the video via ROV that Nathan Perry did of the wreck is probably the best way. He had amazing conditions on the day he did that video.

We met Danny at the Triton at 6:30am to load with a 7am departure. Danny has dove the wreck multiple times and was one of the people to initially find it.

On the day that we dove the wreck, the surface conditions were amazing but it was the day after a series of days with large, deep swells which probably added to the poor visibility situation at depth. We had three divers including myself, Anton, and Nir. Anton & Nir were diving together and our plan was to primarily dive as a team. As you can see in the middle picture, the wreck is very obvious on the sonar.

We all got into the water and I was the first down the line followed immediately by Anton & Nir.

We had pre-arranged that, if we couldn’t see the wreck, Nir would run a line off the downline and I would attach a strobe to the downline. Sure enough, on the way down, about 220 feet deep we descended into a silt cloud that reduced visibility to basically zero. Nir attached his reel to the downline and started searching for the wreck. He eventually found it and we secured his line to the wreck and I attached a light to the line to more easily find it upon return.

The golden rule of this diving is “go down the downline, go up the downline.” Finding Nir’s reel and tracing it back to the downline was our lifeline.

Given how bad the visibility was, I didn’t stray far from Nir’s line tie-off to the wreck. I would go to a location noting features along the way and then retrace my steps to the light as a reference point and then go in a different direction and return. I did that 3-4 times and then decided to head back to the downline as my deco obligation was quickly increasing and we had told Danny our run-time was 2.5 hours (150 minutes) max.

There was almost no current but it was nice to have the floating deco station that Danny has built.

Some readers have requested more information about the specifics of the dive so I’ll give some details. I had a Diluent of 8/60, my deep bailout was a LP72 of 16/54 with about 80cf of gas, I had a LP72 with Nitrox 50, and a AL40 of O2. I brought a scooter with me on the trip but didn’t take it since the current appeared to be minimal. Both Nir & Anton brought their scooters. I also, of course, had my camera. My actual runtime was 2 hours and 25 minutes. Below is the dive profile from Shearwater.

Photos

I debated whether or not to include photos since they are so bad, but I figured it would to illustrate the conditions. Below are a few shots I took of flywheels and part of the gantry crane (I think). It was honestly very hard to know exactly where on the ship we were given how bad the visibility was.

First is an untouched photo straight out of the camera with Anton right above me to give you an idea of just how bad the visibility was:

Below is a gallery of additional photos of some machinery and what I think was part of the gantry crane. I have “de-hazed” these and lowered highlights, etc. just to make them a bit more palatable:

If you reaction is “Brett, those are horrible photos” then you are right on track. 🙂

For more fun, I’ve included some GoPro footage below. If you look very closely at the start of this clip, you can see my light hanging from the line that is our reference point back to the downline. At the end of the clip, I cross paths with Anton.

Below is a screen capture of the frame that shows the light attached to the reel & line back to the downline:

Thanks To…

• Thanks to my fellow divers Anton & Nir. It was a pretty big dive in gnarly conditions and we worked as a team
• Danny Graham for his excellent skills and dive setup. It is a world class operation.