History Fact or Fiction!

[Whitewolf]

Here is an archieved interview that i found written in a much different manner than the usual Wikipedia style.
I thought it made for an interesting read.

[Whitewolf]

PART 1

Sealand Forever!
The Bizarre Story of Europe's Smallest Self-Proclaimed State
by Mark Lucas, The Independent Magazine
Seven miles off the Suffolk coast, the Principality of Sealand is Europe's smallest self-proclaimed independent state. Though only 30 feet wide, it has a history of jealousy and vengeance to rival many larger countries. As plans are announced to film its story, its eccentric rulers offer Mark Lucas a rare guided tour.
"We were known as maniacs, I don't know why," said Walter Mierisch of his life in the Principality of Sealand, Europe's smallest self-proclaimed state, which issues its own passports and has its own national football team. He sat with his friend Michael Bates, the prince regent, remembering the nation's early days, after Bates' s father had first gained control of the abandoned maritime platform nearly 40 years ago.
"They came in at night with hooks and ropes," continued the 55-year-old German of the regular raids by the rival pirate-radio stations," it was really dangerous." The Sealanders fought off their attackers with Molotov cocktails, handguns, and sawn-off shotguns which they had brought along themselves. Other weapons, including an antiquated flame-thrower, they found on the fort when they arrived.
It wasn't long before the Royal Navy took an interest in these night-time firefights taking place only seven miles from the Suffolk shoreline, but the Bates family proved capable of shooting at anyone. "I emptied a magazine right across a minesweeper's bow," Bates remembered of an incident - one of many during those years - "Clouds of black smoke came out of the stern and she lay outside the buoy." Mierisch took up the story in his grammatically perfect but curiously Essex-accented English: "A military helicopter came up...they let down rope ladders and five soldiers started climbing down and you..." - here he paused, pointing accusingly at Bates - "...you went down on one knee and aimed your gun at the helicopter, calm as anything. The marines went quickly back up, one after the other, and flew off. Then when I came back to Southend," he finished indignantly," they put me in prison, the buggers."
Continued in part 2

[Whitewolf]

PART 2

Opinions vary about the 30ft-wide nation's aesthetic value. Joan Bates, Michael's mother and the wife of Sealand's founder, Roy, described it to me as "spectacular and overpowering, an awe-inspiring place," but an American visitor told me it was "unbelievably ugly. Cold, like being on the moon." One thing that everyone is in agreement about, however, is that Roy and Michael Bates have fought to keep possession of the gun platform, which has not been left unoccupied since the family first set foot on it. For all its diminutive size, the nation has a history of jealousy and vengeance to rival far larger sovereign states, Although it is now technically within British territory, Sealand exists in a diplomatic limbo, with the British government knowing it is there but refusing to acknowledge its presence.
Having been abandoned by the Royal Navy in the 1950s, the gun platform was in a state of advanced decay when Roy, an Essex entrepreneur, pirate broadcaster, and owner of a fleet of fishing boats, took it over in partnership with Rohan O'Rahilly of Radio Caroline. It satisfied all his requirements since it was dry, stable and - most importantly for Roy, who was smarting from a recent £100 a day fine for broadcasting without a license - four miles outside of Britain's three-mile territorial limit. Michael remembers the unknown and hopeful Rolling Stones sitting around his parents' dining table, playing a tape of their music, and recalled his father's reaction: " What a load of bloody crap," muttered Roy, the future head of state, "Get rid of the little butterflies." Only a matter of days after the Bates family and Radio Caroline jointly occupied the seafort, Roy realised that he had no desire to share it with another radio station. So at 10 o'clock on Christmas Eve 1967, Roy Bates, Michael - who was 14 at the time - and three "associates" braved the North Sea and climbed up onto the 50ft platform in the dark.
"We went out and took it over," Michael admitted. O'Rohilly's Caroline people were doing their best to celebrate Christmas on the bleak, lantern-lit outpost with cigars and turkey. "There was no violence," remembers Michael: "They were just disc jockeys - a couple of herberts. We just told them, 'Come on, we'll take you ashore.'"
I had come to visit the younger Bates in his Hollywood-style bungalow at Leigh-on-Sea in Essex, where he owns and runs a cockle-fishing boat. Michael of Sealand, to give him his official title, was chatting with his old friend Walter Mierisch in the smoke-filled sitting room, seated beside a porcelain replica of King Tutankhamun's sarcophagus. The 52-year-old Bates is a big, jovial man with a shaved head, gold jewelry and a powerful red Mercedes convertible on the drive. "I'm having a mid-life crisis," he announced. His ex-wife was in the kitchen, having stopped by to wash his clothes. "None of his girlfriends will do it," she had explained earlier, as she leafed through a pornographic magazine and passed it over, open at an article about Sealand. Bates's eyes shone with pleasure as he and his old comrade recalled the good times of the 1960s and 1970s. Mierisch's eyes, on the other hand, were watering with pain; he had just come straight from the doctor, who had diagnosed the herni a that had developed the previous night, and then proceeded to push it back in. He chain-smoked miserably, but reliving the events of 36 years ago appeared to have an analgesic effect and he was soon able to tell how he came to join the Bates family.
In 1968, at the age of 19, Mierisch had run away from home and was trying to get to Namibia, but ran out of money in Tilbury. From the moment he read an article about Roy and Sealand in a German-language newspaper he picked up in a pub, his plans changed drastically. He enlisted the help of a friend and the two of them managed to reach Felixstowe, "we took a rowing boat and tried to go to the fort but after half an hour we didn't get anywhere." Although he gave up on the boat and his friend, he continued looking for Roy Bates. "It took me a fortnight until I finally found him in Southend, and I knocked on the door and said, 'Hello' - these were just about the only words of English I knew - 'my name is Walter and I want to come work for you,' and he said, 'Come in; have you eaten yet?'"
When he transferred to the seafort with Michael, Mierisch soon found that provisions were not always easy to come by. At times the supply boat failed to turn up and in the days before radiophones the two men had to go without essentials for long periods. "We had no food," said Mierisch, "We lived on lobster for two months, do you remember?"
"I never wanted to touch another lobster," groaned Michael. "We caught them in lobster pots that we made ourselves," continued the German, "Lobster in the morning, lobster in the evening - every bloody day."
He recalled a ship from the Trinity House Lighthouse service coming to investigate their activities. "They started shouting, 'Idiots!' and you told them to bugger off our three-mile limit. Can you remember? Then..." Mierisch paused to light another cigarette, "...you shot at them."
The Sealanders were summoned to Essex Crown Court on firearms charges. On 25 November 1968 the trial ended with a ruling that the platform was not part of Britain - being beyond the territorial limit - and was therefore outside British law. Taking this as tacit recognition of Sealand's independent status, the following year Roy decided to make it official by founding his own country, and approached international lawyers. "They told me it was perfectly legal, but impossible," he remembered, adding, "It was a red flag to a bull." In order to simplify the legal proceedings, Sealand became a principality, and the Bates family was suddenly elevated to royalty. Soon the first of the nation's passports were issued and from then on holders have done their best to use them when entering foreign countries, with successfully stamped pages being seen as another sign of legitimacy. The bearers were not always so lucky, as Mierisch, who was proud of his dual nationality, soon discovered: " ;Every time I entered Britain I showed it," he told me. "Then they locked me away again."
Continued in part 3

[Whitewolf]

PART 3

In 1978, the nation suffered its first coup when Sealand national Gernot Putz, noticing how much attention the introduction of Sealand passports had generated around the world, decided to take advantage of what he saw as a potentially lucrative business. Using Dutch mercenaries, he took control of the platform while Michael was aboard. "They tied my feet and wrists, then they picked me up and said, 'Let's throw this bastard over the side.'" He was eventually put ashore unharmed in Holland, from where, despite having no money, he managed to get back to Essex in time to help his father organise a counterattack. They enlisted the help of a stunt-pilot friend with a helicopter, then rounded up some suitable muscle. "My mate Willy was in hospital with something and thought he was dying," said Michael. "The next night he was flying in this helicopter with the doors ripped off across the North Sea."
They approached Sealand against the wind to keep the noise down, arriving just as dawn was breaking. "There was this German dozing in a chair on the deck," Michael recollected. "The first thing he saw was the helicopter appearing from underneath the platform, with us standing on the skids outside of it with coils of rope. I had a sawn-off shotgun hanging round my neck." The attackers abseiled down and Michael landed hard, his gun going off by mistake ("I nearly took my father's head off"), then everyone dived for cover, and in the confusion the Dutchman surrendered. The Sealanders imprisoned Putz and charged him with treason; it took a visit from a German diplomat to negotiate his release.
The operation failed to put an end to the passport trade. There are fewer than 300 legitimate Sealand passports in circulation, but the Sealanders claim that Putz - who subsequently passed himself off as Sealand's finance minister - has since admitted to selling more than 150,000 fakes. The Bates family can only hope they don't all decide to visit their new homeland at the same time. The passports have been put to such varied use as opening money-laundering bank accounts in Slovenia and trying to gain entry to Britain from Hong Kong in the lead-up to the handover; they have a habit of cropping up where least expected.
In 1997, the Bates family were approached by the FBI in connection with the murder of Gianni Versace. Both the killer, Andrew Cunanan, and the owner of the boat on which he committed suicide, had forged passports. The latter apparently drove around Los Angeles with Sealand "diplomatic plates" on his car. "It all comes back to us," complained Michael.
At the small yacht marina of Shotley, sandwiched on a peninsula between the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich on the East Coast, I met three members of the Sealand guard, Jez, Wayne and Sean, who were preparing to take a delivery to the seafort. Over a drink in the local bar, dreadlocked Yorkshireman Jez gave me forms to fill out and inspected my passport, then we joined the others as they loaded the state's 22ft, ex-military, 140-horsepower rigid inflatable boat, the worryingly battered Sealand 1. Under his control, the boat emerged from the gates and we turned straight out to sea; 15 minutes later we were within a few hundred yards of the platform. The immense, green-and brown-stained concrete columns of the two legs rise to 50 feet; the rusting, black-painted slash of steel that overhangs them making the platform near impregnable from below. After we had all donned crash helmets, a hook was lowered from the deck, which the guards attached to eyes on the boat, and we began our slow ascent to Sealand.
Once aboard, I was introduced to the rest of the crew, Mike and John, then Jez led the way through a bulkhead into the living quarters. A passageway known as the Row stretches the length of the low building, in which everything, including the doors, is made of steel studded with huge rivets, all the edges blurred by decades' worth of white paint, like an old ship. The mechanical howl of one of Sealand's four huge generators can always be heard throughout the platform. At the far end of the Row we entered a cabin with the sign reading "Sealand Post Office", and while I struggled out of sodden waterproofs, Jez stamped my passport with the nation's visa.
Afterwards, sitting around the galley table, with a view through a large, double-glazed picture window of the distant amusement arcades on Felixstowe's seafront, the crew tried to describe what being on Sealand is like. Mierisch had told me that "it was a marvelous life, you have a lot of time to think about things," but this didn't appear to be very important to the modern-day crew; if I thought the place was interesting, they said, I should try spending a week here. The nation can get claustrophobic, and it's difficult to imagine how the admiralty managed to squeeze on the wartime compliment of more than 100 crew. Not surprisingly, Rough's Tower wasn't a popular posting.

[Whitewolf]

PART 4
The post office had a baseball bat hidden behind the door. Was it still necessary to fight off invaders? Mike Barrington, who, ironically, spent some time working for Radio Caroline, shook his head: "On the whole, things are quiet here now." He did recall an incident two years ago, however, when he and one of the guards were relaxing in the lounge and heard the clatter of approaching rotor blades. They leapt up, took a couple of shotguns from the armoury and burst out on the deck. "There was a US helicopter gunship hovering 10 feet away," he recalled, "covered in rockets and heavy machine guns - all pointed straight at us." Barrington, who is more of an engineer than a guard, looked at the gunship, then down at his shotgun, and did some quick thinking: "We turned round, slammed the door behind us and ran back down the Row screaming." Fortunately the Americans were simply doing a little sightseeing while on an exercise, and flew off.
I was given a tour of the principality, starting at the top, where a long whip aerial adorns the heavily pitted and largely unused helipad. The rusting main deck, below, is strewn with oil drums, gas canisters and equipment that might one day prove useful in an emergency: very little is thrown away, given how difficult it could be to get a replacement.
There are seven decks in each of the two legs, and descending the narrow companionway is awkward, but, at around 30ft in diameter and well lit, they feel spacious and are surprisingly dry - the walls still lined in the original tongue and groove. The north leg houses guest rooms, a brig, and a conference room, for the most part underwater; through the thick concrete comes the hissing and bubbling sound of water in motion. The south leg is the sensitive side, and I was shown one room - previously Roy and Joan's stateroom - in which racks of computers hummed, and told that I could go no further down.
The computers belong to HavenCo, who leases space on the nation to house an offshore digital data hideout. Companies or individuals who don't want lawyers and government agencies having access to their sensitive computer files and e-mails can store them here. Terrorists, child pornographers, spammers and cyber-saboteurs need not apply, however; even Sealand has its rules. "You have to live in the world," explained Michael, who, as well as being landlord, is HavenCo's Chief Logistics Officer.
The Bates family apparently doesn't feel the need to keep a low profile and recently sold the film rights of their story to Hollywood screenwriter Sean Sorensen. Neither the family nor Sorensen would tell me the exact sums involved, but the screenwriter paid them out of his US$20,000 winnings from the American game show Greed ("money well spent," in his view). He sees Roy's struggle for his principality's recognition as "a natural movie." Although he admits to having difficulty fitting the 40-year time span into two hours of screen-time, he pitched the story successfully to Warner Brothers and the project is now in development. He told me that his interest in the project can be summed up with a single question: "Why does a wealthy man, who drives a Bentley and lives comfortably, fight to live in a bucket of rust on the North Sea?"
"I'm an awkward bugger," was the only reply Roy Bates would give when I put the question to him. Sorensen describes him as "probably the most interesting man in history," a claim which supporters of Jesus Christ, Charlemagne and Albert Einstein may well dispute. History shows, however, that he isn't one to give in without a fight: as a young major in the Second World War, Bates was captured by the Italians and made so many violent attempts to escape that he was finally sentenced to death. As the firing squad raised their rifles, however, an Italian officer rode up on a motorcycle and called a halt, taking the British major away. "By then I was browned off with the whole situation," he recalled.
Joan Bates has had to endure hardships on her husband's behalf: "It's been worth it in the long run - even though I've been tempted to give up many times." It is one thing to hear a group of men bragging about the battles they've been through, but quite another to hear Joan, who was often forced to live alone on Sealand, to tell of how she "slept with a P-.38 [handgun] under my pillow for many years."
Surprisingly, even Britain's bureaucratic decision to extend her territorial limit in 1987 from three to 12 miles off the coast didn't spell the end of the Bates family's reign over their rusting empire. Rough's Tower is now five miles inside that territorial limit. The Sealanders claim that the move was illegal, pointing out that it is against international law for a country to annex a neighbouring territory merely by extending its own boundary. On the eve of the change, Roy extended Sealand's own territory to 12 miles, except where it overlaps his neighbour's, in which case he rather pointedly claims half the distance to the shore.
The nation's future is far from certain: although the British government has consistently stated that it does not recognise Sealand, it has not done anything to try to oust the Bates since the 1970s, despite the Sealanders' continual flaunting of British laws, particularly those to do with firearms. "I don't have a shotgun license," Michael mentioned, going on to explain how he decided not to get one after his best friend shot himself. "They all die around me," he said quietly.
HavenCo feels secure enough to have invested millions of dollars in its operations in the North Sea and Michael has plans to build an island around the platform - "the water's only 20ft deep," he explained. He thinks it could be time for reform: in his opinion the nation might be better run with a senate rather than today's "democratic autocracy." Sealand is also beginning to make an appearance in international sports. The football team, based in Denmark, has played Checkia and Aaland, and the one-man athletics squad has competed in various marathons for Sealand.
Roy himself - having achieved what governments and rival pirate broadcasters failed to do - has left Sealand and retired to Spain. Is he pleased, I wondered, with the way Sealand's future is looking? "I'm 82 years old. If I wake up and have breakfast it's a lovely day," he replied. But Joan of Sealand won't allow anyone to be taken in by the pensioner act: "He's a very determined man," she told me, "and he's still looking for adventure." This is the person, after all, who described being sentenced to death as "a bit of a nuisance."
Much of Michael's time is taken up with Sealand and HavenCo business; he is responsible for ensuring that the American company has everything it needs. Mierisch, meanwhile, now works in fibre-optic communications in Germany and is rarely able to come to England to visit his fellow Sealanders. If Roy summoned him he wouldn't need to think about it, however: "I'd come back immediately," he said.
Though he may have risked his life and spent time in jails for Sealand, he - like the others - has no regrets. Mierisch paused briefly before offering his final verdict: "They were the most important days of my life," he said.

[Wheelie]

It's amusing, sad, rivetting and at the same time leaves you wanting more. Someone could write a good novel just based on that information alone.

[PipSTA]

You'd have to be a very good novelist to come up with a story like Sealand - proof that fact is stranger than fiction.

[Whitewolf]

This is very true, but the basics of all good fiction are based on the most bizzare facts available.

[BARONBOB]

SALUTATIONS . merci pour toutes ses informations précieuses. je connais une grande partie de ces informations car j'ai suivi tout au long des années les journaux la radio la télévision . mais il y a ici certaines que je ne connaissais pas . pouvez vous me dire ou vous avez eu toutes les informations et si elles sont traduites en FRANCAIS , car en passant par un traducteur la lecture est difficile et par fois il est impossible de pouvoir comprendre . Merci de votre réponse . cordialement . BARON BOB

GREETINGS. thank you for all its invaluable information. I know most of this information because I followed throughout the years the newspapers the radio television. but there are here some which I did not know. can you say to me or you had all information and if they are translated into FRENCH, because while passing through a translator the reading is difficult and by time it is impossible to be able to include/understand. Thank you for your answer. cordially. BARON BOB

[Lord Parsons]

A really interesting interview there!

It's not got much in it that hasn't been written elsewhere, but it does put the information into a better light in my opinion, and there are those little bits that are just really nice to hear coming from the people themselves :)