The Terrifying Reality Of Europe's Deadliest Sea

The North Sea lies between Britain and northern Europe: shallow, stormy, crowded with shipping, with a drowned land beneath its floor. It has cost ships and lives in every century on record, from the Great Storm of 1703 to Piper Alpha in 1988. Why it is so hard on ships took centuries to work out. How many people it has drowned has never been counted. CHAPTERS 0:00 Introduction 1:08 Doggerland, the drowned land 10:49 Herring, colliers and the Armada 19:21 The Great Storm of 1703 29:16 The Bell Rock and Grace Darling 37:57 The fishing fleets and Eyemouth 47:09 Caister and the Dogger Bank incident 54:44 The First World War at sea 1:05:34 Why the North Sea is so rough 1:15:44 Convoys, mines and the Shetland Bus 1:25:19 The oil rigs and the helicopters 1:32:59 The capsizing of the Kielland 1:41:37 The night of Piper Alpha 1:51:03 The Draupner wave and the count WHAT THIS FILM DRAWS ON This film draws on Admiralty and Board of Trade records, Defoe's collected letters of 1703, lifeboat journals, Hansard, fishery reports, the Norwegian and British public inquiries into the rig disasters, and published measurements of the waves. Piper Alpha, statement on the Cullen Report — House of Commons (Hansard), 12 November 1990 — https://api.parliament.uk/historic-ha... Investigation of the authorities' work on the Alexander L. Kielland accident — Office of the Auditor General of Norway, 2021 — https://www.riksrevisjonen.no/en/repo... What caused the Alexander L. Kielland accident? — Norwegian Petroleum Museum — https://kielland.industriminne.no/en/... Piper Alpha: The Disaster in Detail — The Chemical Engineer (IChemE) — https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/f... Jutland: Death at sea, source pack — The National Archives (UK) — https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/d... The 'live bait squadron' — The National Archives (UK) — https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/... Northern Barrage and Other Mining Activities — US Navy Historical Section, 1919 (NHHC) — https://www.history.navy.mil/research... SS Richard Montgomery: background information — UK Government — https://www.gov.uk/government/publica... The Eyemouth Fishing Disaster, 1881 — Scottish Archives for Schools (National Records of Scotland) — https://scottisharchivesforschools.or... The Wreck Register and Chart for 1880–81 — RNLI Lifeboat journal, 1882 — https://lifeboatmagazinearchive.rnli.... The Great Storm of 1703 — Royal Museums Greenwich — https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind... The Storm — Daniel Defoe, 1704 (Project Gutenberg) — https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/... 1838: Grace Darling — RNLI — https://rnli.org/about-us/our-history... The Dogger Bank Case (Great Britain v. Russia) — Permanent Court of Arbitration — https://pca-cpa.org/ar/cases/317 Laboratory recreation of the Draupner wave and the role of breaking in crossing seas — McAllister et al., Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 2019 — https://www.cambridge.org/core/servic... What conditions led to the Draupner freak wave? — ECMWF Newsletter, 2016 — https://www.ecmwf.int/sites/default/f... A great wave: the Storegga tsunami and the end of Doggerland? — Walker et al., Antiquity, 2020 — https://bradscholars.brad.ac.uk/entit... Colinda barbed point (NHER 11171) — Norfolk Heritage Explorer — https://nhe.esdm.co.uk/Monument/MNF11171 Region II: Greater North Sea — OSPAR Commission — https://www.ospar.org/convention/the-... Offshore statistics and regulatory activity report 2024 — Health and Safety Executive — https://www.hse.gov.uk/offshore/asset... Subscribe for the next film from Sargasso Films. — About the pictures: Sargasso Films uses archive film and photographs wherever they exist. Where nothing was ever filmed, the picture is a reconstruction and is marked on screen. FOOTAGE AND IMAGE SOURCES U.S. National Archives: https://www.archives.gov NASA: https://images.nasa.gov Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org NOAA Ocean Exploration: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov #NorthSea #PiperAlpha #NorthSeaShipwrecks