LIVERPOOL, UK — A Liverpool widow could be in line for hundreds of thousands of pounds of compensation – three decades after her husband died. Robert Smythe was killed in a horrific diving accident in the North Sea in 1974. Now an ex-divers' group is desperate to find his wife Anne and their two sons. The North Sea Divers Alliance (NSDA) has fought to get payouts for families who lost loved ones working in the oil fields off the Norwegian coast. They say Mrs Smythe, who lived in Dingle Vale, Dingle, when her husband was killed, could be in line to claim upwards of £250,000 from the Norwegian government. NSDA director Tom Wingen wants Mrs Smythe or her children, Stewart and David, who were 12 and nine when their dad died, to contact him in Norway. Mr Wingen told the ECHO: "His family would probably have been left with nothing. Their dad just did not come home alive. "Most of the information which was given to the families was in Norwegian. They had no idea what they were reading. "But Robert's family would have a claim because he was killed." Last month, the group helped win compensation for the family of a diver from Northumberland who died in 1983. They are also about to launch a legal bid for another bereaved North East family. The Norwegian government only recently accepted "moral and political" responsibility for the deaths of foreign divers. It still insists it is not legally accountable. Mr Smythe, then 37, died when his diving bell shot 320ft to the surface during a deep sea mission on January 16, 1974. He was working on the US-owned rig Drill Master, near the Norwegian city Stavanger. Mr Wingen found out Mr Smythe was from Liverpool two years ago after getting the police record of his death. | 
