Matt finally gets to talk about Sealand
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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This podcast was produced on the lands of the Wabakal and Gadigal people. G'day, Matt Bevan here, this is If You're Listening. If there's one type of story that I love, and I wish we could cover more on this show, it's ones about micronations. Stories of people who plant their feet, say, I've had enough, my backyard is now the sovereign nation of new backyard-ia. on last week's episode we looked at one particular micronation the state of free lebanon an unrecognized relatively short-lived israeli puppet state it got me thinking about my all-time favorite plucky underdog micronation it's called sea land and when i mentioned it briefly in an episode last year a lot of you wrote in to express that you shared my enthusiasm
So, here we are. Today, I'm finally telling the story of the radio pirate turned actual pirate who declared himself the prince of a rusting gun platform in the North Sea. I'm joined again by producer Adair Shepard. Hi, Adair.
Hello. Yes, we got a lot of emails about this. There's a lot of Sealand fans amongst the, if you're listeners...
So, Adair, have you seen the movie The Boat That Rocked from 2009?
Yes. Bill Nighy, I love that movie.
I hate that movie.
Oh, no.
The thing was, I didn't hate the movie while watching it. I mean, I did a little bit. It's an interesting movie. It's based on pirate radio and it's based on these guys being off the coast of the UK broadcasting rock music into the UK illegally. Yeah. The problem with it is that there's no plot, right? It's kind of like, isn't it cool that there were these pirate radio guys and then there's a storm and the boat sinks? And that's the whole plot of the story. That's true. But the reason I hate this movie is because the amount of drama that there actually was between the pirate radio stations was extraordinary. And they didn't use any of it, any of the true stories of pirate radio. So I'm going to tell you a true story of pirate radio.
What the boat that rocks should have been.
Okay, I'm excited. And the premise of the story is true in that people were really, really annoyed about the fact that other parts of the world had rock commercial radio.
Why didn't they have it?
Basically because the BBC had a full monopoly on radio broadcasts. There was no other broadcaster in the UK.
Oh, wow. Okay.
And it was illegal to have another radio station in the UK. And so because it's Europe, various people in the UK would listen to radio coming from the mainland and coming from these illegal offshore radio broadcasters who were broadcasting from boats with big transmitters on top of them parked out in the ocean. Now, those boats were problematic and kind of really difficult to live on, difficult to broadcast from. And so off the coast of the Thames, so if you can imagine London, you know, is on the Thames River. The Thames runs east and then it dumps out into the North Sea in kind of a bay area. And in that bay, during World War II, the British were really concerned that the Germans were would come and blockade the Thames and stop boats from coming in and out of the Thames.
And so they developed these things called Monsal Forts, which are basically giant concrete structures made of prefabricated concrete that they made on land, and they would float out into the Thames estuary and then basically pull plugs in the bottom of them.
What is the story behind Sealand and why does Matt love micronations?
They would sink... and then sit on the sand bed of the Thames Estuary. So it was basically two giant concrete columns with a platform on top, and you could put guns on the top of the platform and stop anybody from being able to come into the Thames Estuary area and mess around with them at all.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–4:40
2
What is the story behind Sealand and why does Matt love micronations?
4:40–15:44
3
How did WWII Maunsell forts become pirate radio platforms in the North Sea?
15:44–19:13
4
Who was Paddy Roy Bates and how did Radio Essex seize a fort?
19:13–22:55