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Yankee Classic: Life on an Oil Rig

"If there were a common wish among the 60 men on the rig, it would be that we all go home safely."

by Scott Cramer

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From Yankee Magazine April 1981

Working on an offshore drilling rig is a demanding and dangerous profession. Author Scott Cramer signed on as a roustabout on a rig exploring the Baltimore canyon. Here is his report.

The round-trip fare is $50.95. as I board the bus in Providence I try to remember what I accomplished during my 14 days off: two days devoted to travel, three nights of restless sleep, re-adjusting, and one day for obligations — dentist, friendships, bills. That left me ten days to operate my life as I wished: write a couple of poems, play ball, read. This is free time that I earn by working as a roustabout on a drilling rig 106 miles off the New Jersey coast, 12 hours a day, 14 days in a row.

The bus ride takes eight hours. Switching buses in New York City, I arrive in Atlantic City about dinnertime, take public transportation to my company-paid motel room, then walk to a nearby restaurant for a $12 meal. I return to the room and relax, watch T.V., sleep and dream about that 5 A.M. wake-up for the chopper ride out to the rig.

The only difference between tonight and any other night is that there is a new man in my room, just hired and full of questions that I don't want to answer — it would be a waste of my time and his. If he can just wait another 24 hours, they'll all be answered. I say to him, friend, it's another world out th ere, but there's no need to worry because we're all in this thing together. He nods, but I know I make him nervous. All that riding on the bus lets one think too much. I know what he's going through.

About a year and a half ago I was in Houston. Just out of college, looking for work that required no experience, it seemed I knocked on the doors of every oil company in America. I never got past the receptionist at first, then it was the employment office. After some practice I could make it to a soft leather chair in an executive's office. Even with a beautiful tenth-floor panorama of Houston before me, each interview was a dead end. All the action, all the hiring for offshore work, I found out, took place in southern Louisiana — in Morgan City, Lafayette, Houma. One got a job by going to the bars and not saying the wrong things, buying drinks, making connections. I found work on an oil and gas production platform, seven days on, seven days off. I scrubbed decks and tightened flanges.

After a month I used this experience plus a contact I had made in Houston to get a better job with more responsibility and more money. I scrubbed decks, tightened flanges, and took readings of oil flow rates. For six months, 40 miles offshore, I worked nights, surrounded by blinking lights from drilling rigs, production fields, barges, and work boats. In free moments I called airlines (I had access to a phone), pricing flights to Sydney, Rio, Bombay. I was bored. On one hitch I got so depressed I quit. My poetry stale, and with no exercise, no friends, I vowed never to leave land again. I was hired as a security guard for a large office building in New Orleans. To get back into shape I joined a health club, and as fate would have it, Mr. X, who worked for an offshore drilling company, was also a member. We talked, and the next thing I knew I was heading back home to New England to work on a drill rig in the Baltimore canyon. I heard rumors that work on drill rigs was long, hard, dangerous; pay was good; co-workers were tough. It was all accurate.