Exploring the Depths

After the energy crisis of the 1970’s oil exploration took off in high gear on Canada’s East Coast. This writer was a participant in many of these attempts to derive ‘black gold ‘ from the primordial swamps that lie thousands of feet below the oceans floor on the continental shelf. 

Of late there has been a great furor in regard to seismic testing for hydrocarbons in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (west coast of Cape Breton ) and the Sydney Bight area.  Compressed air guns at very high pressure is current used to probe the oceans floor, but this was not always the case, as I am about to relate.

In the summer of 1975 we were working off the northeast coast of Newfoundland, towing icebergs, running supplies and doing seismic work. Our area of operations was from off Conception Bay in the south to Hamilton Bank in the north. During the summer we used the ports of Holyrood,  Botwood,  St. Anthony and Cartwright.

  When the first surveys were done on the Scotian Shelf in the late 60’s dynamite was used as the detonation tool……….good thing the Sierra Club wasn’t around in those day’s, because when a seismic vessel was running lines across the banks using dynamite, the result, along with a good strong return, was dead fish, and we’re not talking a few fish, we’re talking in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. Crass though they be, the oil Moguls realized that this sort of damage wouldn't be tolerated forever, so the hunt was on to find a more environmentally friendly type of explosive device..........the answer was the spark gun.

Williamson's arrival wasn't, in itself such a surprise, we knew someone was on their way and we had been diverted to Botwood to pick them up, along with his gear, however Williamson in person was just a bit of a shock.

We had just finished supper and were sitting in the messroom wondering where to go for the evening and the general consensus was the Atlantic Hotel, because someone said that the agent had said that Wilf Doyle was going to be on at the Atlantic that evening. There were two doors in the officer's mess and the on opening into the passageway was suddenly filled with the King of the Hippies. This guy was so tall that he had to scrunch down to pass through a standard door. With forty fathoms of gold chains around his neck, clad in cowboy boots, Levi’s, a Stetson and a sleeveless denim jacket, over the shoulders of which his unshorn locks flowed frivolous and free, he made an impressive sight to say the least. He spoke:
" ' Evenin' y' all, mah names’ Williamson, and ah all work fa' Supah Spa’k. Ah've come up heah to this heah Canaydah to build me the muthaw of all spark guns."

"Come in," said the skipper, "we've just finished supper, but I imagine the cook can scare something up for you " "You like a steak?"

He came in and sat down and we realized that he was stoned out his tree. He politely doffed his Stetson, looked around at the crowd and said,
"Which one of y'alls the chief engineer? " My good friend Jim Keizer of Yarmouth, spoke up and said, "That would be me" Now Jim is noted among his peers to become a little excited when things are tight up, and things were about to become that way, for Williamson said, "Can y'all supply me with 300 amps at 120 volts,  chief ?" This request unnerved Jim to such a degree that he reverted to his native tongue.......French; recovering, he said, "No I can't !" Williamson smiled and said "Y'all double up yahr gennies, and y'all kin do it "  "Ah bin a-talkin' to Mistah Carpenter and he sez y' all can do it. Ah only need it momentary, like" (Carpenter was the company's marine super)

Jim did a little equation mentally and realized that we did indeed have the capability to comply with this far out request, so he agreed but admonished the Super Spark guy that the first time that he exceeded that kind of load  parameter he would cut off his supply.

Williamson had flown from Houma, La., to Gander via corporate aircraft and had five crates of gear with him, which we loaded on board and stowed to his satisfaction. With the advent of medium frequency radiotelephony, the tug's cw 500 kcs apparatus had become redundant and had been taken ashore, so the radio room was empty and Williamson set up his instrumentation there.

We sailed the next morning at 0600, with varying degrees of hangover, and after clearing the Bay of Exploits, pointed our bow northward, through calm seas, under blue summer skies. With the icebergs seemingly sculpted from marble and the humpbacks disporting among them, it was a great time for a seaman to commune with nature and commit these views to memory for posterity.

Esau (we found out his given name when he was required to give it when signing on} preferred to work at night, and had full use of the engine room workshop for his project, so he toked and built his giant spark gun as we plowed ever northward toward Hamilton Bank. 

The frame of this monstrosity was sixteen feet long formed of  3 x ½  inch stainless steel flatbar. Mounted in this frame was eight sets of sterling silver electrodes, 1 and 1/8 inch diameter,  which  had an eight inch  gap and were  attached to 150 fathoms of # 4 wire. This wire was housed on a reel powered by a hydraulic motor, and terminated at a spare breaker on the main switchboard. This guy had done his homework, and in his conversation with the superintendent had asked the make of our board and had brought a 300 amp breaker with him that fitted the board to a tee.

I kidded Williamson a lot about his ‘ baby ‘ and on one occasion inferred that it would never work, to which he replied, “ If’n this here gun doan work, ah’ll  be a- pickin’ peanuts all the rest of mah nacheral days! “

The gun was finished by the time we reached the survey location, and we immediately started running lines. When exploring for hydrocarbons the targeted area is gridded off and the explosive charges are set of in such a pattern; thus the term, running lines.

We towed the new spark gun at fifty fathoms, it was equipped with hydroplanes, to maintain a constant depth, and these were computer controlled through a transducer, also mounted on the base of the spark gun. All those cables running back to the ship made for a sizable umbilical cord.

The myriad bird life of the Ladrador Sea converged upon the tug during the long hours of daylight in that northern latitude, and escorted us in thousands. Fulmars, Glacous Gulls, Kittiwakes, Blackheaded  Gulls and many other species that I couldn’t name. Perhaps they thought the tug was the most unlucky fish dragger in the whole of the NorthWestern Atlantic, whatever they thought they followed us faithfully.

Williamson’s spark gun was a complete success. He sat in the radio room, wreathed in smiles, watching the seismograph, some of which were due to his feelings of self satisfaction about his inventive genius, and some I suspect were the end result of Acapulco Gold, or whatever, or more likely Botwood Home Grown.

The gun was set to fire every ten seconds; I can liken being on watch in the engine room to being under depth charge attack in a U-boat, for every time that gun would fire the detonation would come through the ships hull with a hollow boom, and one could actually feel a palpable vibration through the plates.

At night the visual effect was astounding……..the flash of the arc 300 feet beneath the surface and well astern of the vessel was a beautiful thing to see, for the entire area would turn a pale blue, with the brightness of a giant flash bulb; all in all quite a show.

We finished the survey and returned to Botwood to off load Williamson and his equipment. The prototype gun that he built that trip was adopted as an industry standard, and remained so until the advent of the compressed air gun.

Whatever the geologists made of that survey on Hamilton Bank, it couldn’t have looked too good, for there never was a well drilled on that parcel of land to my knowledge, although some wildcat wells were drilled at other locations on the Bank.

The hunt will go on, I’m sure for new and innovative technology, as hydrocarbons become scarcer as the world supply dwindles. New surveying companies have sprung  up, some hung tough, while other fell by the wayside. Still others amalgamated.

I sometimes think back to the seventies and wonder whatever became of Esau Williamson. If he is still in the industry, I guess under today’s stringent drug laws in the work place,  mandatory  random testing and all,  that his toking has been somewhat curtailed!

Seanachie.