The Mighty Servant 3, owned by Dutch contractor Dockwise, had just completed offloading the jack-up Aleutian Key on Wednesday morning, an operation in which the vessel submerges its deck below water level.

A Dockwise spokeswoman said "there were no rough seas" but the 27,720-dwt vessel simply continued to submerge deeper until it finally sank in about 62 metres of water, about 1.6