page_title: Drillship Seacrest
section_title: Typhoon Gay
hierarchical_section_title: Drillship Seacrest / Typhoon Gay
caption_attribution_description: Saffir-Simpson Hurricane ScaleTDTS12345 English: Typhoon Gay (1989) track. Uses the color scheme from the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.
context_page_description: DS Seacrest, also known as "the Scan Queen", was a drill ship built by Far East Levingston Shipbuilding Ltd., Singapore, owned by Unocal Corporation and operated by Great Eastern Drilling and Engineering company. It was sunk by Typhoon Gay in the Gulf of Thailand on 3 November 1989. Ninety-one rig workers were killed after the vessel capsized, resulting in a massive legal case brought against the ship's owners UNOCAL. There were only six reported survivors: one Indonesian diver and five Thai rig crew, although these figures vary slightly depending on the source. Many of the bodies were never recovered. Typhoon Gay produced winds of 100 knots or more with 40 feet waves. It left hundreds of sunken fishing vessels in its wake, killing 529 people and leaving approximately 160,000 homeless.
context_section_description: On 3 November 1989, the Seacrest capsized in Unocal's Platong gas field during the passage of Typhoon Gay. Seacrest had a crew of 97 at the time of the incident. Six survived. The cause of the capsize is attributed to the ship's unseaworthiness as well as the severe weather conditions encountered by the ship during the storm.  Contrary to industry custom and practice, Unocal did not have a standby vessel tending to the Seacrest at the time she capsized, so the crewmen in the water were carried away by the typhoon and the loss of the ship went unnoticed until a helicopter found it floating upside down some four miles from its last location the next day, 4 November. No survivors were found at that time.
  Typhoon Gay was the first typhoon in the past forty years to form in the Gulf of Thailand. Other typhoons which have traversed the gulf have all formed outside the gulf and then entered the gulf, providing substantially more warning of their intensity and direction. Based on weather modelling, the hindcast analysis indicates that the storm rapidly intensified in the vicinity of the Platong field during the morning of 3 November. The storm reached typhoon strength as it approached the Seacrest. Thai military marine weather forecasts and the marine weather forecasts of a private weather service under contract to Unocal's partner in its activities in the Gulf of Thailand, Mitsui Oil Exploration Company (MOECO), had accurately predicted the general path of the storm toward the Seacrest's area of operation and its intensification in the days before 3 November.  Despite the availability of these forecasts, Unocal did not provide weather information about the storm to the Seacrest until 3 November.  By then it was too late to save the men on the ship. (The Seacrest was unable to receive marine weather forecasts itself because Unocal had previously removed the radio equipment the ship needed to do so. Instead the ship's master got a daily weather fax from Unocal headquarters in Bangkok that was faxed to its company man on board who then gave it to the master.  The fax was not a marine weather forecast; it was a general weather report that Unocal picked up each day at the office of the Meteorological Department of Thailand in Bangkok.)
  
  Typhoon Gay is known to have passed directly over the Platong Living Quarters and then over the Seacrest. Both reported the calm during the eye of the storm. The Seacrest is known to have capsized after the eye passed over the ship and the weather abruptly turned severe again. At that time, the Seacrest was attached to one of its bow anchors and at least one of the other anchors in its eight anchor drilling mode anchor pattern. One of the survivors testified that moments before the capsize, he had seen the ship's chief engineer at one of the ship's anchor winches. The anchor winch was not working, so the chief engineer was trying to cut through the anchor cable with a fire axe in an apparent attempt to free the ship from the anchor so that it could navigate and steam up the bow anchor cable thereby avoiding wind and waves on its beam. Caught by at least two anchors, the ship was left taking the predominant wind and the waves on its beam. The ship oscillated broadside to the predominant wind, and, during a series of high waves, coupled with gusty typhoon-strength wind, suddenly, but predictably, capsized to port.
caption: Map plotting the track and the intensity of the storm, according to the Saffir–Simpson scale
exif: {}