The main question presented by this admiralty appeal is whether appellee Versie Kimble could properly be found to have been a seaman for purposеs of the Jones Act and general maritime law at the time of his injuries. Kimble was injured twice while in the employ of Noble Drilling Company, both times while working on stationary drilling platforms at seа, and in both instances the jury found that he was a seaman and that Noble’s negligence had contributed to his injuries. It also found that negligence of appellant Chevron Oil Compаny was a proximate cause of one of the accidents. In accordance with the jury’s verdict, the trial court rendered judgment for appellee Kimble against Noble under the Jones Act and against Chevron under the general maritime law, 1 overruling appellant’s motions for directed verdict and for judgment notwithstanding the verdict. We affirm.
Chevron Oil Cоmpany conducts large offshore oil recovery operations in the Gulf of Mexico for which it hires a number of independent contractors. It owned the two drilling platforms at issue here, platforms “G” and “H,” together with their tenders the S-24 and the S-26, both of which were converted LST's. The drilling platforms were permanent, immobile artificial islands affixed to the ocean floor, but the tenders, although they remained adjacent to the platforms for the most part, were mobile vessels that could be shifted from platform to platfоrm or taken into open sea in rough weather.
At the time of his first injury, appellee Kimble worked as a “driller” for Noble Drilling Company, which owned the drilling rigs on the platform and had been hired by Chevron to perform the actual drilling operation. As a driller, Kimble was in charge of one of the four-man crews that worked in alternating shifts on the platform. Thus he did most of his wоrk on the platform, but there is considerable evidence in the record to support Kimble’s claim that he also had *849 substantial duties on board the tender. In particular, he hаd responsibility for making sure that the drilling mud, which was pumped from the mud room on the vessel, was properly mixed. As ancillary duties, therefore, he was charged with maintenance of the mud room equipment and mud pumps, with training and supervising his crew, with maintaining pipes, and with helping in connecting and disconnecting lines from the vessel to the platform when the vessel was mоved. Moreover, his activities were always closely related to activity on the vessel, which served as a supply, personnel, equipment, fuel and command centеr for the entire drilling operation. A part of the reason for his first injury, for example, seems to have been the absence of necessary tools, which he had sent a member of his crew to fetch from the tool room on the vessel.
In addition, during his tour of duty, which was ten days long followed by five days off, Kimble was assigned a permanent room on board the vessel; he ate and slept aboard. While on board, he was subject to the discipline of the master of the ship and underwent many of the same hazards of the sea to whiсh other members of the crew were subjected. There is even some evidence that he was required on occasion to perform tasks that a more traditional blue-water seaman might be expected to perform, although these were probably rare.
At the time of Kimble’s second injury, he was a member of a floor crew rather than a driller, and his responsibilities with respect to the mud operation were somewhat reduced. But numerous incidents of the relation of his employment to the vessel remained.
It is to be remembered that our question here is not whether these facts, of themselves, constitute Kimble a seaman, but rather whether they support a jury finding that he is one. This question is lаrgely controlled by Noble Drilling Corp. v. Smith, 5th Cir. 1969,
[T]here is an evidentiary basis for a Jones Act case to go to the jury: (1) if there is evidence that the injured workman was assigned permanently to a vessel (including special purpоse structures not usually employed as a means of transport by water but designed to float on water) or performed a substantial part of his work on the vessel’; and (2) if the cаpacity in which he was employed or the duties which he performed contributed to the function of the vessel or to the accomplishment of its mission, or to the operation or welfare of the vessel in terms of its maintenance during its movement or during anchorage for its future trips.
Under this test, coverage of the Jones Act has been extendеd to a wide variety of ships’ personnel not traditionally thought of as seamen but subject, as are seamen, to the negligence hazards with which the Jones Act was intended to deal. The case at bar clearly falls within the province of the jury because (1) there is undoubtedly some evidence that Kimble was assigned permanently to the vessel tending the platform on which he worked in each instance and (2) there is ample evidence that the duties Kimble performed contributed to the function and mission of the tender, sincе its sole reason for existence was to support the platform in drilling for oil.
Appellants advance several arguments by which they seek to avoid liability. First, they assert that there is no evi
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dence from which the jury could have found negligence on the part of either Noble or Chevron; but we have read the record carefully and find that this contention is without merit. Secondly, they argue that Freeman v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 5th Cir., 1968,
In a final attempt to avoid liability, appellants argue correctly that the drilling platforms on which Kimble was injured were not vessels but artificial islands. As such, appellants argue, the platforms are governed not by admiralty but by the law of the adjacent State of Louisiana, which is “borrowed” as federal law on these structures by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, 67 Stat. 462, 43 U.S.C. § 1331 et seq. (1964). This issue has in fact been decided exactly as appellants urge in Rodrigue v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 1969,
Affirmed.
Notes
. Kimble’s theory of reсovery from. Chevron is not entirely clear. At one point, he states that Chevron’s liability under general maritime law does not depend upon his status as a seaman, a claim that, upon its face, would seem to imply that liability rested in some manner upon categorizing the stationary platforms upon which the accidents happened as “vessels.” This argument, however, is foreclosed by the recent decision of the Supreme Court in Rodrigue v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 1969,