2-847-679 - Historic England Archive/Heritage Images

A view of the oil platform Graythorp II being floated away from Graythorp, on its journey along the Seaton Channel towards the North Sea. 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.