Principality of Sealand Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Principality of Sealand is the name that was given by Roy Bates of Essex, England, to a former World War II Royal Navy barge known variously as HMS Roughs and HM Fort Roughs that was built in England and towed to a location at at 51°53'40"N, 1°28'57"E above Rough Sands sandbar off Southeast England where it was intentionally sunk during 1942 in shallow water to rest on the sandbank. It is approximately six miles (10 km) from the county of Suffolk and eight miles from the county of Essex, England. At the time of its placement the territorial waters of the United Kingdom extended for three miles. For other meanings of the name "Sealand" please see the Sealand (disambiguation) page.
HM Fort Roughs
When the sea barge was originally constructed as one of a number of similar Royal Navy barge forts, it was composed of a barge in which two concrete hollow towers had been built in the hold. A platform was attached to the top to the twin towers and a two story stacked building was created in the middle of the platform. The superstructure of the barge was large enough to contain quarters for guns, searchlights, generators, munitions storage and eating and sleeping quarters for troops manning the installation. Due to the fact that the water was shallow at Rough Sands and due to its proximity to the shoreline of England, half of the concrete twin towers from the waterline upwards remained visible from the coastlines of the counties Suffolk and Essex.
After World War II
Following the War the partially submerged sea barge fort was used by various British governmental entities until it was finally retired in 1956. The UK Ministry of Defence as successor in interest to the Ministry of War maintained buoys surrounding the installation to warn ships of this obstacle, especially in time of fog due to the fact that busy shipping lanes criss-crossed the area. UK Ordinance Survey now identify the former sea barge fort as Rough Tower on their charts.
Pirate Radio Era
In the 1960s many of the former WWII offshore marine installations where taken over by squatters who could not afford to buy a ship for purposes of offshore pirate radio broadcasting. Two types of marine forts were used by the broadcasters and both types were designed by Guy Maunsell, one type for the British Army and another for the Royal Navy. The British Government reacted to the advent of pirate radio by using existing legislation where it could prove in a court of law that the installation was inside UK territorial waters and finally by passing into law the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act in August of 1967. The sea barge on Rough Sands was never used for pirate radio broadcasting, but a similar sea barge had been used by Roy Bates to operate a low-power Radio Essex for which he was fined in a British court of law. At that time the operation changed its name to BBMS and Roy Bates was again subjected to legal action by the British Government. For this reason Roy Bates decided to move his equipment from the original sea fort barge which was inside the 3 miles territorial waters of the United Kingdom to the installation on Rough Sands, which at that time was outside the territorial waters of the UK. Before he could recommence broadcasts the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act came into force which applied to any British citizen either inside or outside of the territorial waters. As a result of this Act most of the large offshore radio ships also ceased their operations either just before or at midnight on Monday, August 14, 1967.
1967 Squatter's Rights
On September 2, 1967 Roy Bates gained physical control of the former sea fort located on Rough Sands by squatters rights. Under the terms of squatters rights it is possible, under certain circumstances, to retain possession of property which is not occupied by the owner and then to go to a court of law and claim actual legal ownership. No such legal permission has ever been granted to Roy Bates by a British court of law.
1968 Firearms Incident
On November 25, 1968 Michael Bates was arrested by Essex Police and summoned to appear before a local court in Chelmsford, Essex as a result of an incident during which shots were fired at a British vessel in the vicinity of Rough Tower. According to some reports the vessel's occupants were intending to evict Bates from the fortress, while others state that they were simply attempting to repair a nearby navigation buoy. However, the local court lacked Admiralty jurisdiction, since it was merely a local criminal court for an area of Essex. As a result the case was dismissed on the grounds that the activity in question was outside the jurisdiction of the territorial waters of the UK, outside the jurisdiction of Essex Police and outside the jurisdiction of the local court. That local court system no longer exists in England.
Reaction to Firearms Case
Attention of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Harold Wilson was drawn to the case, since that government has also tracked all illegal acts resulting from the era of pirate radio, especially after the death of Reginald Calvert who was shot to death by Oliver Smedley in 1966 over rival claims to a broadcasting transmitter that had been delivered to another former WWII in the same general area off southeast England. The Cabinet issued a written report which is now available to the public in which it states that the government would keep an eye on Roy Bates while at the same time doing nothing that would feed him with publicity and they dismissed his actions with pejorative observations about his character.
Roy Bates reacted to the court action by referring back to the legal advice he had been given prior to the firearms case. In Wired magazine for July, 2000, Michael Bates claimed that his father's lawyer had found a loophole in international law called "dereliction of sovereignty" and he applied that docrine referring to land to the partially submerged sea barge and claimed that Roy Bates "took over the sovereignty that the British government had derelicted." The adjective derelict and the noun dereliction refer to "things that are not cared for and are in bad condition". The former Royal Navy barge upon which the former HM Fort Roughs was situated, was not in and of itself a geographical location that constituted sovereign territory. It was a partially sunken vessel and as such it came under the classification of the registration laws of the UK which has the sovereign power to register ships.
At about the same time that these events were taking place the British media was full of stories about Prince Charles being made Prince of the Principlaity of Wales, by his mother Queen Elizabeth II. According to this same edition of Wired magazine, Roy Bates, who at the time lived at Westcliffe-on-Sea near Southend-on-Sea, Essex, England, Roy Bates was in a pub with his wife Joan when she "casually mentioned" to her husband Roy Bates and friends who were with them, that she wanted to have "a flag and some palm trees to go with the island her husband had won for her." As a result of this conversation Roy Bates decided to called himself "Prince Roy" of the "Principality of Sealand' and call his wife "Princess Joan".
The Bates Family
Roy who is also known as Paddy Bates, is a retired major who served with the British Army. In 1999, according to The Mirror newspaper, Roy Bates was 77 years old and his wife Joan was recorded as being a "a 69-year-old former model". Their son Michael was 45 in 1999 and according to the same newspaper report, he "''runs a local fishing business and daughter Penny, 49, is married to a solicitor".
1987 Territorial Sea Act
In order to close down some of the pirate radio stations that were operating from similar Maunsell structures, the UK issued and Order-in-Council on September 25 1964 which was then subsequently added to and used to close down the pirate radio operations of Roy Bates. On October 1, 1987 The Territorial Sea Act came into force and extended the territorial waters of the UK from 3 miles to 12 miles, thereby placing Rough Sands within the United Kingdom. Up until this time Roy Bates had made many claims about restarting radio and even television transmission from Rough Tower, but these announcements all ceased with the introduction of the Territorial Sea Act 1987. Roy Bates did not want to test the application of the law to him since he had already been fined for pirate radio broadcasting in he past and the UK Department of Trade and Industry had warned Roy Bates that he would be also be subject to the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967 since he was a British citizen if he began any new transmissions from Rough Tower.
1988 Radio Newyork International
After The Territorial Sea Act 1987 had come into effect in the United Kingdom and after Radio New York International had already been closed down by force after it commenced broadcasting from an ocean going ship anchored off Jones Beach, Long Island, New York in international waters, its owner flew to England and met with Michael Bates, son of Roy and Joan Bates. An agreement was signed (a copy of which was later introduced and filed in evidence in a US federal court case in 1990, in which the ship and the radio station on board the ship were sold to a British company with a London address under the control of Michael Bates. In return the original American owner retained the right to buy back the radio ship and remain a consultant to the new operation. The purpose of this arrangement was to allow the London company to then sell commercial time on the offshore radio station which would would once more anchor off New York, but the ship would claim that it was registered in the independent and sovereign nation called the "Principality of Sealand".
In 1988, after the introduction of The Territorial Sea Act 1987, Radio Newyork International resumed transmissions. The United States immediately reacted by ordering that the station immediately cease broadcasting from international waters to the USA. On the first occasion one year before, armed agents of the USA had physically boarded the ship and taken away in handcuffs the radio station operators who were also the token crew. This time the token caretaker on board the ship, who was also playing prerecorded tapes on AM, FM and shortwave, at first told the US authorities that the ship was registered in the "Principality of Sealand" and that the owner of the station was a London based company. However, when he was told that the ship would be boarded again and he would be arrested, he ceased transmissions immediately.
1990 USA Court Case
In 1990 the owner of Radiio Newyork International which by this time had become a program aired legally over WWCR on shortwave from Tennessee, applied for his own shortwave broadcasting license for a new radio station in Maine. It was then that all of the paperwork relating to Radio Newyork International as an offshore radio station was submitted by both the applicant and the Federal Communications Agency into a US federal Administrative Court in Washington, DC. Meanwhile the applicant had attempted to sell the radio ship to a buyer named Genie Baskir and because the buyer lived close to the court the applicant stayed in the home of the buyer and her husband during the hearings.
The hearings were key to unravelling all of the details about the "Principality of Sealand" because the government of the United States made application to the government of the United Kingdom for a submission of findings concerning the entire matter. As a result one James Murphy who stated that he was an Investigator for the Official Solicitor acting on behalf of the Secretary of State for the Department of Trade and Industry, submitted a sworn statement made under under the laws of both the UK and USA about his own investigation into the claims being made about the existence of a "Principality of Sealand". The applicant to the FCC also took to the witness stand and related his entire relationship with Roy and Michael Bates. The details of this case were reported in transcript form and later, the entire case file complete with affidavits and exhibits was turned over by the lawyer representing the FCC to Genie Baskir personally.
The result of this case was a finding of derision concerning the claims made by Roy Bates which were dismissed because it had been proved by the UK that Roy Bates under any name had no power or authority to register ships and that Rough Tower was merely a disused WWII military installation within UK territorial waters. The applicant later appealed the finding against him and the original decision was upheld in 1991 in which further remarks of derision were added about claims of a "Principality of Sealand". This case has never been challenged by Roy Bates who became furious after hearing about it.
Havenco
In the year 2000 the world's media became awash in stories that the "Principality of Sealand" was setting up a data haven under a company called Havenco. One of the people behind this project was an American citizen named Ryan Lackey. Although claims of independence had been made for the "Principality of Sealand", what Lackey discovered much later was that all mail came via the British Post Office. The original Havenco Ltd had been registered as a British company under British laws. However it was not until Ryan Lackey learned of the 1990-1991 USA court case involving the "Principality of Sealand" that he left the project without legal recourse, except in a British court of law and denounced Roy Bates for lying to him.
Supporting Documentation
Documents in support of this article will be posted. It has been written with access to the FCC files and the notes of Genie Baskir who was present during the 1990 US Court hearings. Tape recordings of conversations between Roy Bates and associates of Genie Baskir concerning the court case have also been made available. Other contributors are welcomed to add their comments. This article has been written due to high degree of controversy surrounding the article under the heading of Sealand and the call to either delete or merge this article with the article under the alternative heading. However, the correct name of this subject article is found on this page and a futher Sealand (disambiguation) page also exists to direct readers to the many other uses of the word "Sealand".
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