CAPSULES

The first time I saw one of these survival capsules was when I was working on an offshore oil production platform. We would lower them to the water periodically to test run them. Crewed by the roustabout foreman, a roustabout, a electrician and a mechanic.

They were crowded with just four aboard for the in service maintenance test. We weren’t sure that

twenty eight wild and wooly offshore oil patch hands could survive each other in one of them for any length of time. In order to hold 28 every one sat in a circle with their body’s touching from knee to shoulder with their back to the outside wall of the capsule.

Here is a size comparison with the jeep.

They were so under powered that even on a glassy slick day in the Gulf of Mexico, the gulf currents would over power it and the station work boat would have to retrieve us if the wind shifted.

We viewed them as a totally last ditch grab at a straw in order to survive.