”Mayday, Mayday, Alexander Kie...” Baste Fanebust, shipping coordinator at the Ekofisk Complex, was one of those who picked up this SOS at 18.30 on 27 March 1980. The Alexander L Kielland flotel (accommodation rig) was in the process of capsizing.

My name is Tony Sylvester. One of the platforms that I was working on was in the Ekofisks, it was the Alfa 2/4 F and I worked for a company at the time that was doing 3 platforms, We’d installed them and hooking up all the pipe work and stuff like that. On that job I was a general foreman and looking after all the trades, installing pipe work, steel work and stuff like that. We’d had an accommodation semi-submersible which was alongside one of the platforms; we was shuttling every day to that platform because there was no accommodation on the platforms we worked at. And that platform was called the Alexander Kielland.

A moderate gale was blowing from the north-west, with rain clouds overhead, when Broken Chain, the monument to the Alexander L Kielland disaster, was unveiled on 20 March 1986.

At the memorial in Førresfjorden Per Priest said: There is not 123, but one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one , and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one, and one.

The head emerging from the foaming waves was white as chalk. By the time it disappeared again, it was blood red. This image of a colleague burned into Kåre A. Svendsbøe's memory during the "Alexander L. Kielland" accident.

The Henrik Ibsen was towed out to Ekofisk on 18 April 1976. This Pentagone-type unit, with five support columns tied together by braces, had been designed for drilling but was now to provide accommodation on the field.