Rescuers Friday called off the search for survivors of a Norwegian oil rig supply vessel which capsized in the North Atlantic off the coast of the Shetland Islands, leaving seven seamen and a 15-year-old boy dead. In addition, three of the 10 people rescued Thursday died in hospital. "After an intensive search we must now accept that despite tremendous efforts from all rescue units involved it is extremely unlikely that the five missing crew will be found alive," Shetland Coastguard spokesman Neville Davis said. Royal Navy divers searching the hull of the Bourbon Dolphin for four of the crew and a 15-year-old Norwegian boy had found nothing, he said. Ten members of the all-Norwegian crew of 15 were winched to safety soon after the tug went down near the Rosebank oil rig, some 120 kilometres off the coast of the Shetlands, Thursday, but three of the men died in hospital later. "This is a great tragedy," Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told broadcaster NRK, adding that "all of Norway shares in the grief." Relatives of the victims and surviving crew members travelled to Lerwick, the capital of the Shetland Islands, Friday. Reports from Norway said that a 15-year-old schoolboy, who was doing student's work experience on the vessel, and his father, a crew member, were among the five who were missing, now presumed dead. Reports said the boy was a pupil at Ytre Heroy High School in the small island fishing community of Heroy on the west coast of Norway. The Bourbon Dolphin was performing a routine anchor-handling operation in fair weather conditions at the time of the accident and issued no distress call, British rescuers said. Norwegian media suggested Friday that an anchor chain snagged on one side of the vessel, which was overturned by the force of the winds and waves. "There should be anchor stops to prevent slippage but it appears that perhaps the anchor has gone up the side and that it put strain on the vessel and perhaps caused it to sink," said Jake Malloy, general secretary of the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee in Scotland. The ship, which is less than a year old, had been working just over 1.6 kilometres from the Rosebank oilfield when it capsized, and was still connected to the facility by an anchor chain, coastguards said.
