Graythorp, Graythorp, Hartlepool, UK, 1975 (b/w photo)

Contractor, Laing Pipelines Offshore; Photographer, John Laing and Son Ltd; A team of people clambering down from the oil platform Graythorp II onto a boat moored alongside In the early 1970s Laing Pipelines Offshore constructed the Graythorp fabrication yard and dry dock on the site of the old William Gray Shipyard. The company created a dry dock which was used for the construction of fixed platform North Sea drilling rigs for the BP North Sea Oil Project. The oil platform Graythorp I was launched on Saturday 29th June 1974 and on the weekend of 14th-15th June 1975, Graythorp II was named and floated out of the dock basin down the Seaton Channel to where it was handed over to its owners BP. This photograph appears to have been taken just after the platform had been floated along the Seaton Channel to where tugs then took over, towing the structure out to sea.