When it comes to ground breaking craft some names will keep cropping up, and one of those in the early days was OSA (the Offshore Supply Association) who really put money into their designs. We have already been amazed at their manifestation of an anchor-handler and in 1977 the industry was equally set back on its heels when the  OP7000, appeared in the form of the Falderntor, the Huntetor, the Kaubturm and the Kreusturm. These ships, in a similar manner to the anchor-handlers, took into consideration the windage created by substantial accommodation blocks and the effect of waves breaking over the bows when under way and so the accommodation was low, and the bridge set well back behind the high bow. Also like the anchor-handlers the funnels were positioned on either side of the bridge so that the driver would have an unimpeded view of everything aft when he was at the controls. They had probably been designed as “three length” pipe carriers, and incidentally the company had already commissioned numerous “two length” pipe carriers, but by the time they appeared in 1977 they immediately became platform supply ships. They were almost 80 metres long but were slim in the beam, being just over 15 metres wide. This gave them a deck area of 580 m2. Their two engines developed 6000 bhp and they were provided with two 600 bhp bow thrusters and two 300 bhp stern thrusters. They were also very early vessels with the “bathtub” main deck, so that the cargo and the people working on it were protected by tanks on the port and starboard side and the stern. Later in their lives they had the bathtub decked in, so that tanks of various sorts could be installed underneath, and the freeboard was now such that the cargo and the people working on the deck were above the waves anyway. The four ships have had numerous owners, possiby the Falderntor having the most exciting history, since after a serious fire it re-entered service as the Gulf offshore’s North Prince and would go on to be owned by Nomis and then by Vroon where it became the VOS Prince. In 2011 it was sold to the French navy and renamed VN Partisan, and appears to be still serving as a submarine support vessel of some sort, with a load of accommodation modules on the deck and a helideck at the aft end. The Kreuzturm eventually became the Sable Sea owned and operated by the Canadian shipowner Secunda Marine Services mostly in the North Sea. It appears to have been broken up in Portugal in 2013, and the Kaubturm and the Huntetor have remained with the OSA fleet owners, firstly OIL and then Tidewater, and both might still be afloat somewhere, in a creek, bayou or sheltered Carribean bay. 

PHOTOGRAPHS:  The Falderntor in 1988 (apparently shortly after its fire) by Jurgen Scholz and the Sable Sealeaving Aberdeen in 2001 by Victor Gibson.