Amid the horror of Piper Alpha, there were such remarkable acts of bravery that 20 men were decorated for their part in the rescue efforts — some giving their own lives to save others.
Charles Haffey, a Fife man with the smack of brine in his veins, fell in love with the sea and joined the Royal Navy in the 1970s.
Soon enough, he was travelling to the South Atlantic as part of the British fleet which fought in the Falklands conflict.
After that experience, he recalls sitting in a bar with his confreres in Methil and chewing the fat over what they would all do in the future.
Mr Haffey told the gathering he had decided to join the Merchant Navy and relocate to Aberdeen to start a new career, working in the expanding oil and gas industry.
One or two expressed reservations. But, as he told his friends: “What’s the worst that can happen?”
On July 6 1988, as one of the crew members on the stand-by vessel Silver Pit, he discovered the answer when he was part of the rescue team which had to deal with the devastation.
He and his colleagues on board the converted fishing trawler were the first to arrive at the scene.
And yet, even as they strove to pull casualties from the water and deal with a situation which was beyond anybody’s comprehension, Mr Haffey maintained a combination of sangfroid and camaraderie with his colleagues.
Not that there was any real alternative in the circumstances.
He said: “I don’t know whose idea it was to use old trawlers to deal with emergencies in the North Sea. Because the Silver Pit was a really old boat, dating back to the 1940s.
“Let’s just say I wouldn’t be buying them a beer.
“But, on that night when the platform blew up, we couldn’t afford to worry about anything else than doing our best to help the poor lads who had been on the rig.
‘Incredible heat and flame and noise’
“It was a vision of hell. Quite frankly, you could not have imagined anything like that would ever happen. As you approached Piper Alpha, there was this incredible heat and flame and noise.
“If you have ever been in the Navy, you’ll know that seamen tend to have a gallows humour. Bad things happen and you have to be prepared to deal with it.
“Yet, from the moment we heard the explosion and the alarm, it was pandemonium. I wasn’t aware of time passing – it was just a blur.
“We managed to make a bit of a difference, but the scale of the tragedy was overwhelming. I was only 26, but I had already seen casualties in war. Yet this was something different altogether.”
Mr Haffey underestimates his contribution and that of all those on the Silver Pit.
In 1990, following the publication of the Cullen Report, he was one of the seven men awarded George Medals for their bravery.
He added: “I was staying with my brother and he told me this letter had come in with a royal seal on the back.
“Well, I didn’t know much about what getting a George Medal meant. But when I mentioned it later to my dad – who was a fireman – he shook my hand and said ‘congratulations’.
‘Some of us came back; others didn’t’
“Then the five of us who had survived – sadly, two of the others didn’t make it – travelled to Buckingham Palace and it quickly became a big deal with the press wanting our pictures and the TV people wanting to talk to us.
“But you know, I always thought it was more of an award for all the men who joined the rescue mission that night. Nobody was any more or less brave than the others. We all went into Dante’s Inferno. Some of us came back; others didn’t.”
Mr Haffey said it took him around a decade to stop feeling so angry about what happened that night.
“But somehow you just have to reason with yourself: no matter how angry you get about this, you are not going to bring those guys back.”
Despite turning his back on a career at sea after Piper Alpha to become a civil servant, he still has a hankering for the Big Blue.
He said: “I was invited on to HMS Kent a few years ago and it was the first time in ages I had been on a ship. Well, I looked around me and I shed a wee tear.
“I still have moments where I remember living in Aberdeen and I head up there and go to the harbour and down to the beach and these places bring back so many memories.
“Piper Alpha didn’t destroy my love for the sea. I loved being in the north-east and the people were fantastic after the tragedy and showed so much compassion and much concern.
“But, of course, nothing was quite the same afterwards. It was one of those terrible situations where everything that could go wrong did go wrong, it sparked a chain reaction, and there was a terrible price to pay.
“But the banter, the humour, the feeling of being out in the ocean and on the waves… I still miss it.”
