Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Zaren Elizabeth Saren be really quiet because I saw like
Speaker 2: two security guards earlier.
Speaker 3: I dropped so many tools in the basement. I saw
Speaker 3: for sure they'd hear him. But it was just you
Speaker 3: turning every time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah it was me. Maybe I was, you know,
Speaker 2: I think it was my reflection. I didn't see secret
Speaker 2: that you. I got itror Cool, We go ahead record.
Speaker 2: Have you ever been surrounded by chaos and just want
Speaker 2: to get away?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, I've been to a family event.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. So like I mean imagine, like maybe you're
Speaker 2: sitting in an airport. Someone could be sitting in an
Speaker 2: airport right now, Oh, totally packed in. Well, someone saves
Speaker 2: six seats at the gate for family members. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: probably don't exist, you know. And then like and because
Speaker 2: you never see him come back, and like folks are
Speaker 2: coffing with open mouths and water costs twelve dollars.
Speaker 3: So you're like, oh god, I finished that place.
Speaker 2: Maybe you're in stop and go traffic on the freeway
Speaker 2: and you're watching the driver in front of you litter
Speaker 2: and there's like a storm approaching from the west, and
Speaker 2: your head hurts and some joker keeps trying to change
Speaker 2: lanes like it's going to get them there anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I'm not a patient driver in holiday traffic.
Speaker 2: No, maybe, no, you're not. Maybe you're looking at the
Speaker 2: state of the world, kind of wanting to just opt
Speaker 2: out of the crazy, avoid the news like I do,
Speaker 2: dreading each new weird development, wondering if there's a drone
Speaker 2: above you or the constellation O'Bryan, feeling like rules only
Speaker 2: apply to you and no one else. You ever feel
Speaker 2: like that? Oh yeah, maybe you're sitting at your job,
Speaker 2: watching the clock, listening to like inane conversations in the
Speaker 2: longest of the year long, chasing arbitrary deadlines, letting calls
Speaker 2: go to voicemail, marveling to yourself at each indignity about
Speaker 2: that you'll do for a dollar maybe maybe anyway, So
Speaker 2: maybe you want to get away. Maybe you want to
Speaker 2: go somewhere that's just your own. You ever want that,
Speaker 2: your own private Idaho, your own private island. You don't
Speaker 2: have to be Richard Branson to get your own.
Speaker 3: Thank God, you can be. You don't want to do,
Speaker 3: not want to be rich just the Choppersess, I don't
Speaker 3: want to look in the mirror and see that smarmy
Speaker 3: look looking back.
Speaker 2: Apparently he owns his private island, and I guess he
Speaker 2: bought it as like a joke, like someone wanted millions
Speaker 2: for it ages ago, and he lowballed an offer and
Speaker 2: they took it, and all of a sudden, okay island.
Speaker 2: But like, yeah, he's so like Austin Powers. Anyway, Richard
Speaker 2: Branson has an island. Did you know who else? Patty
Speaker 2: Roy Bates. Oh yeah, he's a pirate radio empresario and
Speaker 2: founder of the Nation of not Islam Sealandan p. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he and his family they claimed an old British
Speaker 2: naval fort located off the shore of England. I told
Speaker 2: you about this radio, the water and island. They called
Speaker 2: this German sea Land. Yeah, the Germans showed up amazing.
Speaker 2: So I thought about Sea Land recently because you were
Speaker 2: part of a show called Zakistan. Oh yeah, yeah. It's
Speaker 2: about a micronation, or like micronations in general. I love
Speaker 2: how bonkers those are.
Speaker 3: Totally. Ryan Murdock and Gabby Watson I talk all about
Speaker 3: it and they go on to deep dive like they
Speaker 3: go to micro con. It's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so fascinating to me, and like there was
Speaker 2: a time when it was easy to go and claim
Speaker 2: someone else's land is yours, and like create a country
Speaker 2: and do what you want.
Speaker 3: Hundreds of years for ages, you.
Speaker 2: Can't really do that anymore. You can buy you can
Speaker 2: buy land in the US, but you don't own it completely.
Speaker 2: It's on us soil exactly, I want my own soil,
Speaker 2: for crying out.
Speaker 3: We got to do, Marlon Brando, buy an island in
Speaker 3: a place where you're like, people are like, we wish
Speaker 3: we didn't sell them that island. It's too late.
Speaker 2: Now we got the paperwork we could probably I don't
Speaker 2: know this. The whole head orders is empty. And if
Speaker 2: we go from desk to desk and collect like loose change.
Speaker 3: Johnny Depp has an island. See if I say, we
Speaker 3: get close to him, get him to sign some paperwork
Speaker 3: over he's.
Speaker 2: Not paying attention to But can we make it our own?
Speaker 3: We're like you schmoothed an island out of Johnny Depp.
Speaker 3: Everyone would love that.
Speaker 2: I bet I go through and I lift up keyboards
Speaker 2: and computers. Maybe someone's got like a bitcoin pass on.
Speaker 3: The like we forgot about it.
Speaker 2: I forgot okay, so let's do that. When we're done here.
Speaker 2: There are some who pull off this. I want to
Speaker 2: have my own land, sea lands one of them. So
Speaker 2: for those who want to get away, those who crave
Speaker 2: their own government pace structures, the blueprint sea land or seaaland.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't without drama, remember the Germans, Germans, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't without crime. But you know what, the good
Speaker 2: stuff never is. So I present to you, Zarin, it's
Speaker 2: a country, if we say so, the island nation of
Speaker 2: sea lands. And by the way, I know they don't
Speaker 2: make them anymore, but I would love to hold a
Speaker 2: sealand passport.
Speaker 3: Oh hell yeah, maybe just fakes them up. What do
Speaker 3: they do with sue us?
Speaker 2: Good point? Well, Zaren?
Speaker 3: Oh hey, what's up, Elizabeth?
Speaker 4: You know it's ridiculous, Oh girl, do I Okay, Sir
Speaker 4: Hugh Beaver, So, Sir Beaver, he was the managing director
Speaker 4: for Guinness Brewery. Okay, now this dude, Sir Beaver, he
Speaker 4: noted down at the pub there was always these arguments
Speaker 4: and they often came down to something that was an
Speaker 4: easily verifiable fact, and he thought this was just ridiculous.
Speaker 4: So he asked his employer to help him compile all
Speaker 4: of the facts he could find into a book to
Speaker 4: end bar fights. He wanted to bring peace to the pub.
Speaker 4: That book was eventually called the Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, all right, so, and now it's basically to
Speaker 4: become like this compendium of stud be human tricks. But
Speaker 4: originally it was supposed to bring peace to the pub?
Speaker 2: Did it for a while?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't say, well, it just issued challenges. Probably. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that is ridiculous, ridiculous. You know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 2: But please don't taking over an abandoned seafort and making
Speaker 2: it your own country. Ooh, can I get how to
Speaker 2: on this ridiculously awesome? Yeah? This is Ridiculous Crime A
Speaker 2: podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons. It's
Speaker 2: always ninety nine percent murder free and one ridiculous. Today,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you about an absolute outrageous caper.
Speaker 2: Comes to us from a listener. Dustin Pyle recommended this one.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about stealing an island, and we're
Speaker 2: going to talk about a rogue invented nation. So far
Speaker 2: we're talking international intrigue. Okay, and it all begins with
Speaker 2: pirate radio.
Speaker 3: How am I not involved in this story?
Speaker 2: Well, zaren, I know you like pirates, yes, and I
Speaker 2: love radio and I know you like radio. What do
Speaker 2: you think about pirate radio? Are? Now you already know this,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to explain it to you again. I'm
Speaker 2: going to a woman's plain please in a way.
Speaker 3: It's like at last, so it crossed my legs.
Speaker 2: Pirate radio stations are those that operate without a broadcast license.
Speaker 2: You know that right, Well, now you do. Without a license,
Speaker 2: stations have to camp out on unused frequencies and that's
Speaker 2: called wave piracy. Yes, so in the UK, the piracy
Speaker 2: part of the term was also a nod to the
Speaker 2: fact that, up until the seventies a lot of these
Speaker 2: people operated stations from ships at sea, marine platforms, that
Speaker 2: sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, so it was literal.
Speaker 2: So they're on these marine platforms. What do I mean
Speaker 2: by that? Well, let me tell you disused naval forts.
Speaker 4: That's a thing, disused naval forts in the sea. Yeah,
Speaker 4: because sub platforms. Sure, okay, not really. During World War
Speaker 4: Two the English built these things called Monsole forts, and
Speaker 4: they were named after Guy or Ghee Monsel, who m
Speaker 4: a U. N. S. E.
Speaker 2: L L. So they build these things called monsole Forts.
Speaker 2: They're in like the North Sea. When I say like
Speaker 2: they're in the North Sea, I didn't need that qualifier.
Speaker 2: And there were ways to defend the Thames Estuary from
Speaker 2: Nazi attacks. Okay, so you know you don't want them
Speaker 2: coming up and so.
Speaker 3: Wait, you're going to get into the Thames from the
Speaker 3: North Sea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're in part of it. Okay, they could just
Speaker 2: like go up the Thames and crawl up the skirt of.
Speaker 4: England just because quite how I pictured it.
Speaker 3: But it's very effective, thank you, good good metaphor.
Speaker 2: So these I'm just I like to paint visual pictures
Speaker 2: and you did, girl, so a lot these monsole forts.
Speaker 2: They look a lot like the at ats in Star Wars.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, all terrained armored transports.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like the big mechanical robot dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: So here in Oakland, we absolutely love to say that
Speaker 2: the container cranes at the Port of Oakland, which are
Speaker 2: rad looking, were the inspiration for the at at.
Speaker 3: Walkers, don't tell me that's not true.
Speaker 2: People have been saying this for years. But one of
Speaker 2: my favorite journalists, Peter hart Love at the San Francisco Chronicle,
Speaker 2: oh lord, he was able to ask George Lucas himself, no,
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight, I'm not listening, and it
Speaker 2: turns out the Oakland cranes had nothing to do. I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry for where.
Speaker 3: Is that true? That can't be true. He has said
Speaker 3: that like Degoba is named after, but Diego Bay, he
Speaker 3: took those cranes, he said, at least as far as
Speaker 3: I was aware. He has said that the cranes were an.
Speaker 2: Inspiration because he has no respect for Oakland.
Speaker 3: No, I'm telling you.
Speaker 2: But you know what, that's why we're this amazing underdog city.
Speaker 2: You know, people who know no town.
Speaker 3: So uh.
Speaker 2: He said that the ad Ads were inspired by this
Speaker 2: millange of structures and contraptions. Milange, I put that in there. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's not a quote.
Speaker 3: Didn't seem like very Lucas.
Speaker 2: It's an amalgamation. So I think that Monsole forts uh
Speaker 2: influenced the ad at design. That's where I'm going with this.
Speaker 2: That when I looked at a picture there. So there
Speaker 2: are two types of these forts. There are naval forts
Speaker 2: and army forts, and they're both on water. But the
Speaker 2: army forts are the ones that look like ad Ads,
Speaker 2: not the naval ones just want to put that out there.
Speaker 2: They're just like the army ones are like big boxes
Speaker 2: on stillt legs.
Speaker 3: Are these metal cement what are we talking metal?
Speaker 2: A combination combob.
Speaker 3: Do they look like it's more like say an oil
Speaker 3: refinery out on the water. They look more like you know,
Speaker 3: cement like James Bond sub base.
Speaker 2: The naval forts look like a combination between oil refineries
Speaker 2: and a Bond Villain base. And the army forts look
Speaker 2: like at ads.
Speaker 3: Okay, thank you, there you go.
Speaker 2: They at at ones. The army ones they kind of
Speaker 2: look like they're like loping off through the waves in
Speaker 2: the distance when you see pictures. The naval ones are substantial.
Speaker 2: They are biggins. So they have these huge, massive towers
Speaker 2: that lift up out of the water and they have
Speaker 2: this like cement pontoon at the bottom that gets sunk
Speaker 2: down and holds it oh okay to the floor talking yeah,
Speaker 2: and like the the structure isn't too dissimilar in shape
Speaker 2: from the above deck on a naval destroyer, like the
Speaker 2: top part of it that goes on top of the towers.
Speaker 2: They resemble like we said, oil platforms. Those are also
Speaker 2: found in the North Sea, but further up. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to post a picture of these just so everyone
Speaker 2: can get a good sense. But there were four monsole
Speaker 2: naval forts that were built. Rough Sands was the name
Speaker 2: of one. Sunkhead Okay, Tongue Sands and knock John.
Speaker 3: What these names?
Speaker 2: They just drew them out of a hat. I mean,
Speaker 2: I suppose the head is like a sunkhead, is like
Speaker 2: the head of the mouth of the river, beach head John.
Speaker 3: But knock John, that's the one that jumps out.
Speaker 2: So I mean the other ones involve sand. So sure.
Speaker 2: So the forts, as I'm giving this docent tour, they
Speaker 2: better hire me for this sort of stuff. The forts
Speaker 2: have a concrete pontoon base.
Speaker 3: Excellent.
Speaker 2: The towers are sixty feet tall twenty four feet in diameter,
Speaker 2: I said Biggins. Each tower has seven floors, so we've
Speaker 2: established that. And that's where there's crew quarters, storage, operational
Speaker 2: type things, generators, fresh water tanks. There's a landing jetty
Speaker 2: called a Dolphin, and then there's like a crane to
Speaker 2: pick up supplies. The big deck, like I said, kind
Speaker 2: of sits on top of the towers. Total area including
Speaker 2: the hollow towers ten thousand square feet. Damn yeah, and
Speaker 2: the towers were initially built to house two hundred to
Speaker 2: three hundred people. That's cramming them in there, though, I
Speaker 2: got it.
Speaker 3: Like submarine style, so humans into this silver too.
Speaker 2: Like sardines. The four I want to tell you about
Speaker 2: is rough Sands. Okay, we'll get to knock John in
Speaker 2: a bit, but rough Sands, that's the one we're focusing
Speaker 2: on today. That one was built to protect the town
Speaker 2: of ipswich.
Speaker 3: Ah ipswitch clams, yeah.
Speaker 2: And flipping those ip switches. And it sits about six
Speaker 2: nautical miles from the coast. To answer your previous question,
Speaker 2: you can put your.
Speaker 3: Hand down now, yes, thank you. My arm was hurting.
Speaker 2: So rough Sands, six nautical miles from the coast, write
Speaker 2: that down. Picking about everybody in the world, the fort
Speaker 2: saw like legit action in World War Two. Well, I
Speaker 2: think they all kind of got together, they banded together
Speaker 2: and brought down a boat. But I can only find
Speaker 2: that they took down one German boat. Was there that
Speaker 2: their mere presence was threatening.
Speaker 3: They were like scarecrows of the sea exactly.
Speaker 2: So it gets abandoned in nineteen forty eight, but it
Speaker 2: was nineteen sixty six that became a banner year for
Speaker 2: rough Sands. Okay zaren, Yes, I want you to close
Speaker 2: your eyes and I want you to picture it. Christmas
Speaker 2: Eve nineteen sixty six. Two men, a father and son
Speaker 2: sit in a dinghy in the North Sea, just off
Speaker 2: the southeast coast of England. The sea is unusually calm.
Speaker 2: One of them hums a song while the other pilots
Speaker 2: the craft toward a large structure ahead rough Sands Naval Bass.
Speaker 2: They reached the base, tie off on the tower and
Speaker 2: climb the ladder toward the entry points. There are already
Speaker 2: people on the base. Now, those are the good folks
Speaker 2: at Radio Caroline. So Radio Caroline is a legit station now,
Speaker 2: but it began life as a pirate radio frequency, and
Speaker 2: they were really groundbreaking because they played continuous pop songs
Speaker 2: all day, and the legal stations were like the state
Speaker 2: run BBC ones, and so they had to play like
Speaker 2: a mix of stuff to appeal to all of the public.
Speaker 3: Playing like folk tunes and opera and we're just going
Speaker 3: to play the.
Speaker 2: Gardening shows and talk. And then they would also play
Speaker 2: like kind of lame ripoffs of current music. It on
Speaker 2: like the banjo exactly. Radio Caroline wanted to get loose
Speaker 2: many and they wanted to count of that stuffy old programming.
Speaker 2: They're like, loosen your ties, guys. They operated off of
Speaker 2: ships just off the coast of England and they could
Speaker 2: reach almost all of the UK and parts of the
Speaker 2: Irish Republic damn there. And they were hit makers. They
Speaker 2: would play things that got so much you know, uh,
Speaker 2: so many listeners, so much listeners that you know, people
Speaker 2: would you know, go out and buy the records.
Speaker 3: And so they hit the charts. Because so now we're
Speaker 3: the record companies and the artists trying to appeal to them.
Speaker 3: Have they figured this out?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And and the thing is they start getting all
Speaker 2: this competition. So there are American interests they're funding like
Speaker 2: stations off the coast, and because they know they can
Speaker 2: drive sales, so more and more of these stations are
Speaker 2: popping up and they're shaping the culture and the popular
Speaker 2: music landscape. And they're also fighting over the nautical landscape.
Speaker 2: So the stations realized that, like they they could have
Speaker 2: fixed bases in the actual abandoned bases, and so they
Speaker 2: started squatting them to take them over. But don't forget
Speaker 2: there aren't many of them. Yeah, four four naval ones,
Speaker 2: four army ones. Now this means that there's a number
Speaker 2: of skirmishes and armed hijackings of the.
Speaker 3: Courts between like rival pirates.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's like literal piracy going on.
Speaker 3: So they had like actual pirate vanguards landing and then
Speaker 3: doing it getting into like fights and clashes. Now do
Speaker 3: they have swords?
Speaker 2: They have weaponry.
Speaker 3: They have real weaponry. And now are they doing like gunfights?
Speaker 3: Are like more like your clubs and sticks, a little.
Speaker 2: Bit of everything. Okay, they did, So this is going
Speaker 2: to bring us back to Christmas Eve nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 2: Patty Roy Bates and his teenage son Michael, they're the
Speaker 2: ones in the dinghy. Now, they had a pirate station
Speaker 2: that they called Radio.
Speaker 3: Essex Station two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they said that they were the first twenty four
Speaker 2: hour pirate radio station and they had already set up
Speaker 2: on the abandoned knock John Ford. Okay, so they're out
Speaker 2: at knock John. The problem was that knock John is
Speaker 2: within three nautical miles of the coast. That means that
Speaker 2: it's in British territorial waters. Now remember how far did
Speaker 2: you write this down? How far away is rough Sands?
Speaker 3: Four is four nautical miles. It's six six. I still
Speaker 3: got my first guest notes guess.
Speaker 2: Six nautical miles. So that meant that that was in
Speaker 2: international waters, yes, knock John British territorial waters, and that
Speaker 2: meant that the UK could shut it down and they
Speaker 2: had the authority to do it. So the British government
Speaker 2: has no authority over rough Sands. Roy and Michael. They
Speaker 2: decide to set up shop there, so they're going to
Speaker 2: move their operations from knock John to rough Sands. This
Speaker 2: is like gibberish. That's okay. The only problem is that
Speaker 2: Radio Caroline the previously mentioned they were already set up there.
Speaker 2: They had they were using rough Sands as an outpost,
Speaker 2: so they weren't broadcasting from there. These people it was
Speaker 2: like a way station where they could have supplies dropped
Speaker 2: off and then their boats could come and power.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, just like a supply station.
Speaker 2: Roy and Michael they get there. They scale the metal
Speaker 2: ladder rungs, make it to the platform, same method by
Speaker 2: the way that they took knock John. Because they had
Speaker 2: to kick someone out of knock John to take it.
Speaker 2: They take it by force. One of the Radio Caroline
Speaker 2: dudes has a rifle for protection and uh, you know,
Speaker 2: because the pirate radio wars are heaten up, but they're
Speaker 2: no match for Roy and Michael. Now it's not clear
Speaker 2: if Roy and Michael were armed as well, but the
Speaker 2: two of them were able to corral the Caroline folks
Speaker 2: and escort them back to dry Land.
Speaker 3: Are these like hippies?
Speaker 2: They kind of think that maybe they're. Yeah, they're like
Speaker 2: in earth shoes, shaggy hair.
Speaker 3: There's some long hairrison bergenstocks.
Speaker 2: They're like, look, man, they lose their footing on the
Speaker 2: deck because their foot comes out of the birkenstocks. Uh
Speaker 2: you know, no cap on birkenstocks.
Speaker 3: But no, you're wearing some right now on my hands.
Speaker 2: And so they get them to dry Land. Roy eventually
Speaker 2: brings his radio transmitter equipment to rough Sands, but he
Speaker 2: winds up never broadcasting from there. Okay, so he takes
Speaker 2: it by force and then it's like okay.
Speaker 3: But also they're broadcasting twenty four hours. Do they have
Speaker 3: like staff? Are they running this themselves?
Speaker 2: It's the wife gotation. It's a family operation. Now, Radio Caroline.
Speaker 2: They're not going to go quietly. They tried a bunch
Speaker 2: of times to reclaim the fort no avail. Others tried
Speaker 2: other you know, like invaders tried to come up the ladder.
Speaker 2: They thought them off.
Speaker 3: Hippie Sam Bellamy trying to not exactly.
Speaker 2: The Bates clan just they were too hard boiled, and
Speaker 2: they had firearms. They had Molotov cocktails that they would
Speaker 2: use against invader. They had homemade projectiles.
Speaker 3: Potato guns.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was thinking when I read homemade projectiles,
Speaker 2: and like, I started looking out the window wistfully and
Speaker 2: imagining potato guns. I knew someone who they built a
Speaker 2: potato gun and fired it out of their apartment window
Speaker 2: at a punk house, and they used to fire it
Speaker 2: at garbage trucks because they were They said, they were
Speaker 2: slow moving and loosely affiliated with the government, and that's
Speaker 2: why they targeted them. So they've got firearms, they got
Speaker 2: Molotov cocktails, they got homemade projectiles. Baby, they got a dream.
Speaker 2: And when we come back from this intrusive commercial break,
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you about this dream and all
Speaker 2: of it's ridiculous glory.
Speaker 3: He is Aaron, Oh hey, I'm still here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, when we left off Patti Roy Bates and his.
Speaker 3: Son Michael, Yeah, I'm taking notes.
Speaker 2: They had hijacked a decommissioned naval outpost in the North Sea,
Speaker 2: ostensibly to use for a pirate radio station base. Let's
Speaker 2: come back to that in a bit. First, I want
Speaker 2: to tell you about an investment opportunity. No, I want
Speaker 2: to tell you about Roy Bates, a real character. You
Speaker 2: know I love characters, So Patti Roy Bates born August
Speaker 2: twenty ninth, nineteen twenty one. He was one of only
Speaker 2: He was the only one of five siblings to survive
Speaker 2: past early childhood rough stuff, tough. He leaves home to
Speaker 2: go fight for the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.
Speaker 2: Good now, yep, he comes back. He's fifteen. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that was really crazy fighting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, a lot of casualties.
Speaker 2: So he comes back and he winds up fighting in
Speaker 2: World War Two as well, goes to Italy, North Africa, Iraq, Syria.
Speaker 2: He does the whole tour. He was a prisoner of
Speaker 2: war twice. The second time his plane crashed on the
Speaker 2: Isle of Rhodes and he was taken prisoner by Greek fascists,
Speaker 2: but he was rescued from a firing squad by a
Speaker 2: quote passing German officer. How does that work? That makes
Speaker 2: no sense to me, Like why I would imagine that
Speaker 2: the passing German officer would see a British soldier and
Speaker 2: be like line him up. I don't know. So maybe
Speaker 2: the guy had a change of heart anyway.
Speaker 3: Maybe he look cute.
Speaker 2: It could be he was smoking hot. The soldiers like, oh,
Speaker 2: save that one from this once again, smoking hot, too pretty,
Speaker 2: you're so pretty talk. He was wounded multiple times and
Speaker 2: he survived malaria, sandfly fever, and frostbite.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm starting to see why he was winning the
Speaker 3: Pirate Wars. Yeah, like pirate radio that nothing.
Speaker 2: Is it hard boiled? So after the war he goes
Speaker 2: and starts importing meat from the Irish Republic into Northern Ireland,
Speaker 2: just general meats. And he also imports rubber from Malaysia.
Speaker 3: So was he doing this like import export?
Speaker 2: I think there are huge quotation marks around import exports.
Speaker 2: He also ran a chain of butcher.
Speaker 3: Shops, which we all know said cash business.
Speaker 2: So in the early sixties he also fished for decorative seaweed.
Speaker 2: I don't even know what that is. That he sold
Speaker 2: to Floris in the US and Canada.
Speaker 3: The decorative seaweed that we you'd love over here. You
Speaker 3: know the other day I was going to get you
Speaker 3: a Hey, it's Tuesday, here's some decorative seaweed to cheer
Speaker 3: up your day. Yeah, couldn't find any because it was
Speaker 3: sold out. That's how much we love it.
Speaker 2: Well. So the other day I was like, I was
Speaker 2: rollerblading in the park. And I say that because I
Speaker 2: don't rollerblade, but I know someone who does and near
Speaker 2: here he is, he's really close by right now. And
Speaker 2: I saw you sitting at a park bench making a
Speaker 2: wreath out of decorative seaweed, and you said you were
Speaker 2: just gonna hang it on a stranger's door to brighten
Speaker 2: their day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I do every couple of two weeks.
Speaker 2: Is that why you're covered in glitter? Because you're putting
Speaker 2: glitter on the on the wreath. When I saw you, glitter.
Speaker 3: Is kind of like you know, my it's my mark.
Speaker 3: It's how you know it's from me. You're like, you
Speaker 3: shake something, a bunch of glitter comes out. You're like the.
Speaker 2: Zeren dust. So decorative seaweed, the stuff you have may
Speaker 2: have come from old stock.
Speaker 3: Then how are you going to get into the decorative
Speaker 3: seeded let alone? Like I mean, I can see you're
Speaker 3: like into the decorative business, but like decorative seaweed. Like, fine,
Speaker 3: you got some like driftwood, you got some nice stones,
Speaker 3: You're you're gathering stuff. I get it, the focusing on
Speaker 3: decorative seaweed.
Speaker 2: The problem I have is that when I think of seaweed,
Speaker 2: I think of two things. I think of sushi, the
Speaker 2: nori on the out side, right, and then I think
Speaker 2: of California kelp beds.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, those like you can whip your little brother.
Speaker 2: So and they smell terrible, oh the worst. So I
Speaker 2: don't know what's going on seaweed. Is it really a
Speaker 2: it's a pretty pungent thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, you can eat it though that stuff the yeah,
Speaker 3: if you just really like salty.
Speaker 2: Really salt efficient. So we've gotten off track here, but
Speaker 2: you have to admit that harvesting decorative seaweed is a
Speaker 2: pretty amazing gig for if you want to just like
Speaker 2: be a character. And I think I'm going to add
Speaker 2: that to my list of things I tell people I do.
Speaker 3: I also trade in whale teeth.
Speaker 2: And so Patty Roy bates Roy as he went by
Speaker 2: in the early say he starts radio Essex Natural Fight
Speaker 2: it's a natural evolution, and that brings us up to
Speaker 2: rough Sands. So I told you he took control of
Speaker 2: the fort, he set up his broadcast equipment, and then
Speaker 2: was like, but that's because according to the New York
Speaker 2: Times and I quote, the Marine Broadcasting Act of nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven made it illegal for pirate radios, even those
Speaker 2: outside territorial waters, to employ British citizens. Mister Bates promptly
Speaker 2: declared independence, probably hoping to circumvent the strictures of the Act.
Speaker 2: He's like, I'm in international waters.
Speaker 1: Hm.
Speaker 2: Too bad. So sad you can't get me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he jokes, glue, whatever your citizen's been doing
Speaker 3: is it bounces off me and sticks to you.
Speaker 2: That sounds like a you problem this whole we don't
Speaker 2: want citizens. So Roy jokes with his wife Joan that
Speaker 2: now that he was unable to really broadcast, she basically
Speaker 2: has her own private island.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so they go out to drinks with some pals
Speaker 2: and they're telling their friends all about rough Sands. He's like, look,
Speaker 2: I took over this fort. They're like, oh, Roy, you
Speaker 2: not again. He's just like wearing a seaweed suit like
Speaker 2: a gilly sea so he you know, he says, look,
Speaker 2: I took it over and Joan was like, you know what,
Speaker 2: it's a shame. It doesn't have a few palm trees,
Speaker 2: a bit of sunshine in its own flag. That's a quote,
Speaker 2: really yeah, but shimming shimmying her shoulders, it's a shame.
Speaker 2: So one of the friends is like, hello, make it
Speaker 2: an actual island.
Speaker 3: Let's make it happen.
Speaker 2: People, let's do this, and then they all high fived
Speaker 2: and then skipped out into the street.
Speaker 3: I have a sewing machine.
Speaker 2: Roy goes right to his lawyers. Of course, a man
Speaker 2: has lawyers. So for Jones's birthday, that's what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: they're on retainer. He's like, all right, look, well no
Speaker 2: it's not me this time, I have an island. They're like,
Speaker 2: oh god, and then some of them have like dollar
Speaker 2: signs in their eyes. Jones's birthday, September second, nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: Roy gives her a pretty stunning gift. He declared the
Speaker 2: principality of Sea Land and was like, here's your island.
Speaker 3: We are a country now, baby.
Speaker 2: He comes up with a motto he Mary libertos Latin
Speaker 2: from Latin four from the Sea Freedom.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, out of the sea freedom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He creates a flag. It's red, white and black.
Speaker 2: There's a big triangle red at the top left corner.
Speaker 2: I know there's a term for all the different parts
Speaker 2: of the flag, but as you know, I play fast
Speaker 2: and loose. There's a diagonal stripe of white across the center,
Speaker 2: and then the rest is a black triangle on the
Speaker 2: lower right. He made up a cool crest.
Speaker 3: What's on the crest stuff? Stuff and things?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: It's like there's like a tower and animals. I don't
Speaker 2: remember Latin. I looked at him a mass cold. Then
Speaker 2: I just forgot about it. He had money, a Sealand dollar,
Speaker 2: which is equal to one US dollar seabucks. He gives
Speaker 2: his wife a title, Princess Joan.
Speaker 3: Wait does that make him the prince?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's Prince Roy, Prince Roy Okay. And then they
Speaker 2: pack up their kids, Prince Michael and Princess Penelope, and
Speaker 2: they moved to Sealand like this long suffering family, Like,
Speaker 2: load up the royal family, We're going to Seeland's.
Speaker 3: Got a new bug in his bonnet.
Speaker 2: So nineteen sixty seven, the UK military decides to destroy
Speaker 2: the remaining towers, which were sitting in international waters, and
Speaker 2: allegedly a crew on a Royal Navy tug boat called out,
Speaker 2: you're next to the Royal family while they were built there.
Speaker 2: In May of sixty eight, Royal Navy boat, a real
Speaker 2: Royal Navy boat came with fifty feet of Sealand, and
Speaker 2: apparently there are claims that they yelled obscenities at the
Speaker 2: kids and that they made what's next, who thunk it?
Speaker 2: And then they made obscene gestures at sixteen year old
Speaker 2: Princess Penelope, who yeah, so what is Prince Michael? He
Speaker 2: sees this, He's like, not on my watch, and he
Speaker 2: fires warning shots at the vessel.
Speaker 5: Yes, And then there's also another version of the story
Speaker 5: where they say that workers were servicing in nearby Bowie
Speaker 5: and that Michael fired warning shots to quote, remind these
Speaker 5: workers of Seland's territorial sovereignty.
Speaker 3: You can do that.
Speaker 2: I am a sovereign citizen. That am I being detained?
Speaker 2: So roy and Michael their UK citizens, They yeah, they're
Speaker 2: subjects of the Crown. They did later become citizens of Sealand,
Speaker 2: but they never renounced their British citizenship and in general
Speaker 2: they are concerned with you know, the well being of
Speaker 2: the UK. They're there all the time firing a weapon.
Speaker 3: Did Seland have free health care.
Speaker 2: Like a you know, a needle and thread or.
Speaker 3: Michael.
Speaker 2: If Michael isn't the one who shot you, you can't
Speaker 2: fire a weapon at the UK Royal Navy. It's illegal.
Speaker 2: So they the two, Prince Roy and Prince Michael. They
Speaker 2: get called into British court under the Firearms Act. The
Speaker 2: judge decided that the court did not have jurisdiction and
Speaker 2: sent Roy and Michael. Princess Roy and Michael on their way.
Speaker 2: They're released. Now Sealand considers that its first quote de
Speaker 2: facto recognition. So they're saying, well, since you know, the
Speaker 2: court said they didn't have jurisdiction, they're saying, we're a
Speaker 2: real place. And that is the year that Sealand begins
Speaker 2: issuing its own official passports. Now, in the late sixties,
Speaker 2: they were causing the Royal Navy a lot of headaches
Speaker 2: because Cuba's on everyone's mind. The Brits are afraid they're
Speaker 2: going to have the same kind of situation happening. Naval
Speaker 2: officers they come up with.
Speaker 3: The Brits are worried that the Soviet Union is going
Speaker 3: to give nuclear weapons to the land.
Speaker 2: They're like, you know, put proper, get a little funky
Speaker 2: over there.
Speaker 3: They're going to go communists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know what they're they plan. They're like,
Speaker 2: you know what, let's just bomb them.
Speaker 3: You're serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they come up with this plan, but then they
Speaker 2: decide against it. Probably gonna lame idea. I mean, they
Speaker 2: don't even have a radio station. So by the early
Speaker 2: seventies there are fifty people living on Seaaland.
Speaker 3: Was Michael getting busy?
Speaker 2: No, a young lad. It's extended family bringing people over,
Speaker 2: having children. That's what I thought, you pervert, It's just populating.
Speaker 3: God not that way.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, they're just recruiting in a busy fashion,
Speaker 2: extended family, friends, random workers, that kind of stuff. Enter
Speaker 2: Alexander Achenbach. That's a serious name, Yeah, Alexander Achenbach. He
Speaker 2: was a diamond dealer and general businessman in quotation marks.
Speaker 3: He deal diamonds and you're a general businessman that just
Speaker 3: says it.
Speaker 2: All right there, it's delicious. He approaches Roy with an idea.
Speaker 3: I bet it was a great idea.
Speaker 2: He said, hey, baby.
Speaker 3: You just want to come they down by myself.
Speaker 2: Hey, sugar, let's expand and develop. What does he mean
Speaker 2: by that? I want to know he envisioned like Omlas,
Speaker 2: like utopia. And I say that because I am sure
Speaker 2: that he accounted for a neglected child in a basement.
Speaker 3: Somewhere part of the plan.
Speaker 2: If you don't know what I'm talking about, read the
Speaker 2: Ursula Lagwin story the ones who walked away from Omelas,
Speaker 2: and then ruminate on who is is our society's child
Speaker 2: in the basement. That's just a little fun.
Speaker 3: Homework for y'all.
Speaker 2: Anyway, Alex saw a bustling island nation had a vision. Yeah,
Speaker 2: profits yeah, he's a forward thinker. He wanted a casino.
Speaker 3: Naturally first, I mean, hello, I was going to guess
Speaker 3: that it's the.
Speaker 2: First plant that flag. He wanted a public commons with
Speaker 2: like foliage so plants stuff. Yeah, there are these places
Speaker 2: where people can walk and things are green. What I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's a new concept.
Speaker 3: It's a commons. It's in an area that you share.
Speaker 2: You could park your rump on the bench a park park.
Speaker 2: He wanted a duty free shop because I guess he
Speaker 2: wanted to sell. He wanted booze, perfume and watches. He
Speaker 2: wanted infrastructure. He wanted like a post office.
Speaker 3: He wanted a bank, he settled down Ben Franklin.
Speaker 2: He wanted lodging, he wanted apartments like a boarding house.
Speaker 3: Hotels, oh, hotels, okay.
Speaker 2: And wanted he wanted dining. He wanted entertainment. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he also wanted an oil refinery. Now the platform is big,
Speaker 2: but it's not that big exactly. He's like a kid.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the kids are doing these days
Speaker 2: with their online and the games in the in the
Speaker 2: video games. But isn't there one where they build stuff
Speaker 2: in like an alternate word Minecraft? Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He wanted to do Minecraft, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's where you build like virtual stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like there's like roadblocks and stuff.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I'm like, look, it's either Solitaire or Tetris.
Speaker 3: That's where you're at. Yeah, how's your Miss pac Man
Speaker 3: score doing?
Speaker 2: Or it's you know, Friends without the rue. So anyway,
Speaker 2: he wants all this stuff and he's in his mind
Speaker 2: building it out, and there's just no way this is possible.
Speaker 2: But you know what, Prince Roy, he likes the cut
Speaker 2: of this guy's jib, and so he names Achenbach. He
Speaker 2: names him Foreign Minister of Sealand because he's a foreigner,
Speaker 2: I guess. And then the two got to work to
Speaker 2: drafting the Young Nations Constitution.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is going to be a huge jig.
Speaker 2: So Achenbach. He also wanted a lifetime appointment of prime Minister,
Speaker 2: but Roy was like, you know, at chill out, cool out, dude,
Speaker 2: let's just get this set up first, before you're getting
Speaker 2: ahead of yourself.
Speaker 3: Settled down, Cromwell.
Speaker 2: Oh god. And so he becomes a citizen of Sealand
Speaker 2: Achenbach does, and he tries to renounce his German citizenship,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Like we won't let you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I just suddenly had a flash like what if
Speaker 2: this is pronounced sealand sealand and I've been saying sealand No.
Speaker 3: I think it could be either one, right, they could
Speaker 3: be Sealand or sea Land.
Speaker 2: We'll just say it seland ready.
Speaker 3: Put the emphasis. He put the emphosis on a different salabo.
Speaker 3: It totally changes how it sounds.
Speaker 2: I just I've only been reading about it, and it's
Speaker 2: just suddenly dawned on me.
Speaker 3: You can say Zeland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever, My apologies if I'm not saying it right
Speaker 2: that I don't need a disclaimer on every episode. I
Speaker 2: am so sorry I will not be pronouncing this correctly.
Speaker 2: So Auchenbach, he becomes a citizen of Sealand Zealand and
Speaker 2: tries to renounce his German citizenship, but it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: We've got you, You're German life.
Speaker 2: The German court rules that quote the platform was not
Speaker 2: part of the Earth's surface, that it was lacking in
Speaker 2: community life, and that its minuscule territory did not constitute
Speaker 2: a living space that was viable over the long term.
Speaker 3: This is the most German decision ever. First of all,
Speaker 3: it's not even attached to the surface of the US.
Speaker 3: What are we doing here?
Speaker 2: Like? No, big nope. Next, So Achenbach, he's displeased. He's
Speaker 2: itching to get his plan in motion. There are room
Speaker 2: is that maybe his plans weren't really on the up
Speaker 2: and up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, diamond trader.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe he's a different kind of general businessman. He's
Speaker 2: the kind of businessman that you like, Karen ok So.
Speaker 2: He gets into an argument about money with Prince Roy.
Speaker 2: Always the money. Achenbach, dead set on his plan. Didn't
Speaker 2: want anyone, even a prince, to get in his way.
Speaker 2: I have a quick picture it for you, Sarin. August
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight. The royal couple, Prince Roy and Princess Joan.
Speaker 2: They're away from sealand sealand on a trip to the
Speaker 2: mainland mainland. They're headed to Austria to meet up with
Speaker 2: Achenbach to talk about the possible casino state business. Prince
Speaker 2: Michael stayed home. He's out on the deck, probably sunning himself.
Speaker 2: In the distance, he hears the sound of a helicopter.
Speaker 2: He looks up to see one approaching sealand no one's
Speaker 2: scheduled to arrive. Who's coming to this small island nation.
Speaker 2: Is it a foreign dignitary, a celebrity looking for the
Speaker 2: next exclusive altercation spot. Is it Alton John piloting his
Speaker 2: own helicopter? Is it Harrison Ford? Doesn't he know how
Speaker 2: to fly a helicopter or just a plane?
Speaker 3: I don't know anything.
Speaker 2: He pushes his earring as like an activation because the helicopter,
Speaker 2: and then he gets a inspector gadget helicopter thing that
Speaker 2: comes out of it. Is it a cracked local news
Speaker 2: team for a traffic accident or a chase?
Speaker 3: There's an investigative news team.
Speaker 2: When we come back from this break, I'm gonna let
Speaker 2: you know who it is on the way to sealand
Speaker 2: cealant and why I.
Speaker 3: Want you over here, pins and needles.
Speaker 2: Okay, So before the break, we were with twenty five
Speaker 2: year old Prince Michael as he ran around his sealand
Speaker 2: sealand I'm just going to go with sealand from here on,
Speaker 2: I'm putting the flag in that right to you, it
Speaker 2: all feels right. Actually, nothing feels right right now. He's
Speaker 2: running around alone, dressed like Tom Cruise and risky business
Speaker 2: with only a broadcloth dressed shirt tidy white. He's an
Speaker 2: athletic sock.
Speaker 3: Okay, as you like it? Now? Is he armed it? Also?
Speaker 3: Do you have a rifle? And the tidy whities and.
Speaker 2: The Actually he's probably wearing like a heavy fisherman's sweater, imagine,
Speaker 2: and like durable action slacks, captain's hat, or like.
Speaker 3: A little beanie I don't know, one of those iris.
Speaker 2: Everyone just imagine what you what makes you happiest. I
Speaker 2: just want everyone to be happy. So whatever he's wearing,
Speaker 2: he's on the deck of Sea Land. He hears the
Speaker 2: approaching copter. He's not taking any chances, so as you
Speaker 2: were wondering, Yes, he grabs a rifle and he prepares
Speaker 2: for whomever is arriving. I know, Prince Michael, because you
Speaker 2: figure if it's like, if it's a friendly then you
Speaker 2: can do like a oh military salute. Yeah, and if.
Speaker 3: It's they're coming to a protected area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's thoughtful. So the copter hovers above and
Speaker 2: three men repel down, two burly dutchmen and a guy
Speaker 2: in a suit.
Speaker 3: I was thinking it's gonna be British, says.
Speaker 2: Now again with the clothing the man in the suit,
Speaker 2: I don't know if he's actually wearing a suit or
Speaker 2: is he dressed in like that tactical casual look like
Speaker 2: a governor visiting a disaster site.
Speaker 3: Could you be wearing one of those sands, a belt, suits.
Speaker 2: A jumpsuit. Yeah, who knows? He's got like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: polo shirt, windbreaker look of overall general discomfort. So he
Speaker 2: introduces himself. Hello, I am gearnot Poots.
Speaker 3: WHOA okay?
Speaker 2: Who in the h E double hockey sticks? Is gear
Speaker 2: not Poots?
Speaker 3: That's what I'm wondering over here.
Speaker 2: Thank me, I'm glad, I asked gear Nott Poots he's
Speaker 2: Ackenbox lawyer. He gingerly which Prince Michael and asks them
Speaker 2: to put down the weapon. He also hands the Prince
Speaker 2: a telegram which states that they have permission from Roy
Speaker 2: himself to come to Sealand.
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy eight telegram. Okay, yeah, is.
Speaker 2: The telegram legit? Yeah, no, of course not. I don't
Speaker 2: think it's forged. They go inside and talk. Now Michael's
Speaker 2: a little suspicious. He agrees to go inside and then
Speaker 2: they head into one of the rooms, you know, in
Speaker 2: the platform. Michael, being a polite member of the Sealand aristocracy,
Speaker 2: he offers the gentleman whiskey, you.
Speaker 3: Know, as his tradition on Sealand.
Speaker 2: It's the ceremonial whiskey. They thank him, they accept it.
Speaker 3: The whiskey ceremony is a very serious thing.
Speaker 2: There are so many steps to seventeen steps.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of people know this.
Speaker 2: So they're probably stoked that it's not tea Yeah, because
Speaker 2: you know, it's what's now.
Speaker 3: They know they're not in the UK anymore, you don't, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's true.
Speaker 2: So Michael heads over to this little bar in the
Speaker 2: room starts to pour the three men. They tiptoe like
Speaker 2: little cartoon kitty cats towards the door. They slip out,
Speaker 2: and then they lock poor Prince Michael in the tower.
Speaker 3: How do they lock him in from outside?
Speaker 2: Well, no, they're like they're in the room with him.
Speaker 2: He turns around to pour the booze. They sneak out
Speaker 2: of the room, slam the door, lock it.
Speaker 3: The door is usually locked from the inside.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know, okay, maybe that was like a
Speaker 2: punishment room and they had a dead bowlt on the outside.
Speaker 3: The blockaded the door in.
Speaker 2: They probably like tied off the handle and like you know,
Speaker 2: or stuck the Well, Michael's banging on the door fruitlessly,
Speaker 2: ack and bock. He obviously knew that Roy wouldn't be
Speaker 2: there when he sent that helicopter to sea Land because
Speaker 2: he's supposed to be meeting with them in Austria.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a straight up pirate gank move.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he stands Prince Roy up for the meeting.
Speaker 2: He ghosts him and so Prince Roy starts to get
Speaker 2: worried that there's this setup. Sealand didn't have a phone
Speaker 2: or a working ship to shore radio. Who Yeah, So
Speaker 2: Prince Roy called fishing captains in the area and yeah,
Speaker 2: he was to run over. He's like hey, and they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: what's up. He's like, I'm in Austria. Listen, quick question.
Speaker 2: Can you swing by and see if everything's cool? At Seland,
Speaker 2: like it's pronounced Zealand, He's like, whatever, it's my island.
Speaker 2: Can you go check on Prince Mikey and so one
Speaker 2: of the captains like, you know, I actually saw something.
Speaker 2: I saw a helicopter hovering over and then landing. Roy
Speaker 2: loses it freaks out. So back at sealand Celand, the
Speaker 2: three men, they have Prince Michael locked in the room.
Speaker 2: He's in the tower. He's trying to grow his hair
Speaker 2: out as fast as he can to scale down Rapunzel Stu.
Speaker 2: He was in there for four days, oh damn. And
Speaker 2: then they let him go. They flagged down a passing
Speaker 2: fishing boat and they just threw them on there, like
Speaker 2: off you go.
Speaker 3: There are fifty other people on this platform.
Speaker 2: Right, No, at this point I think it kind of dwindle, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I think there may be some people anyway. The
Speaker 2: boat heads back to port in Holland, the fishing boat
Speaker 2: with its royal cargo. Once in Holland, Prince Michael meets
Speaker 2: up with Prince Roy and the two of them hatch
Speaker 2: a plan. Prince Roy is pals with a helicopter pilot.
Speaker 2: Roy is pals with everybody. He's got a guy he
Speaker 2: knows a guy. But it's not just any helicopter pilot.
Speaker 2: It's a guy who used to work on James Bond movies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he's he's a pro. They say, can you take
Speaker 2: us back to Sealand on a submarine? And he's like,
Speaker 2: got Roger Moore in a cage in the back of
Speaker 2: the helicopter. Uh. So they intend to take back what's
Speaker 2: theirs with the help of the pilot. In the middle
Speaker 2: of the night, they take the doors off of the
Speaker 2: helicopter for easy repelling, and they make their way to
Speaker 2: sealand Sealand under cover of darkness.
Speaker 3: Like yeah.
Speaker 2: When they arrive, the two princes wait, is that where
Speaker 2: the spin Doctor's song comes from? We may never know
Speaker 2: because I'm not going to even bother to look up
Speaker 2: the lyrics. The two Princes descend one two Princes? Can
Speaker 2: I also let you know that Prince Michael a total
Speaker 2: badass out for revenge. He's toting a sowd off shotgun
Speaker 2: at this point around anymore.
Speaker 3: It's amazing because I got a room cleaner.
Speaker 2: The two guys slide down the ropes and they land
Speaker 2: on top of one of the buildings on the platform,
Speaker 2: all of Auchenbox German goons like he's got a bunch
Speaker 2: of dudes there. Now they're running around on deck like
Speaker 2: they're in like an eighties militarized action movie. I'm kind
Speaker 2: of imagining Commando Shortzenegger, which has one of the best
Speaker 2: movie lines. Is I quoted all the time after seeing
Speaker 2: it as a child, and there's it's great to have
Speaker 2: a little kid saying this.
Speaker 3: Is it the one that you promised you could kill
Speaker 3: me last?
Speaker 2: No, it's cutting a little girl's neck is like cutting
Speaker 2: warm butter.
Speaker 3: That would as a child all the time.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was real popular. So Prince Michael, he
Speaker 2: jumps on the from the roof of the deck, he
Speaker 2: jumps down to the platform. It's a pretty big jump. Now,
Speaker 2: it's the kind of jump like if I did it,
Speaker 2: my ankles would both shatter upon impact and blind the
Speaker 2: goons in a shower of bone, flesh and blood. That's
Speaker 2: why I would make like a really good and bad
Speaker 2: soldier of fortune. Bad maneuvering skills, but good distractionary tactics.
Speaker 3: And low pay.
Speaker 2: I work for a load of no pay. Prince Michael
Speaker 2: jumps off the roof without his ankles exploding, but the
Speaker 2: sowd off does accidentally discharge when he jumps. This turns
Speaker 2: out to be a good.
Speaker 3: Thing though, shotgun hand on the pomp.
Speaker 2: So no one gets shot. And it scared the poop
Speaker 2: out of these goons. Like they hear a.
Speaker 3: Shock that like this kid lands and.
Speaker 2: It's like ah, they give up right away. They're like, oh,
Speaker 2: we surrender.
Speaker 3: Yeah wow. So losing to England and Americas earlier.
Speaker 2: Look, you got got sixty six World Cup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, couple them up, wreck them.
Speaker 2: Garnet Poots, I like saying it like that, like a
Speaker 2: total jacket and gar not. Poots and his goons were
Speaker 2: held hostage by the princes. The royal family soon releases
Speaker 2: the henchmen, but they keep Poots and Poots. See, he's
Speaker 2: also a sea Land citizens, sealands citizens. He is charged
Speaker 2: in the court of sealand they have a judge. Yeah,
Speaker 2: they basically I don't know. I think I think Prince
Speaker 2: Roy is the judge. They basically have the same laws
Speaker 2: as the UK, but they allow guns. How they've explained it,
Speaker 2: They've explained it that way.
Speaker 3: Bullets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they charged Poots with treason and he's detained
Speaker 2: sealand he's sentenced to life on the platform. They're like,
Speaker 2: you have offended, you have offended us. You have to
Speaker 2: live here forever.
Speaker 3: Now we're gonna nail your foot to the like just.
Speaker 2: At the fort. He has to life at the fort.
Speaker 3: To stay here with us forever until you.
Speaker 2: You've offended us. Now you have to live here. I
Speaker 2: don't know why he wasn't exiled anyway. The German embassy
Speaker 2: asked the British for help to get his release, and
Speaker 2: the Brits are like seedlands outside of our jurisdiction international waters.
Speaker 2: So the Germans they send send a diplomat from London
Speaker 2: to negotiate the release of Gernot puts Now. Because of
Speaker 2: this diplomatic envoy, right Seland considers that another de facto
Speaker 2: recognition by Germany. But Germany's like, that's not what this means.
Speaker 2: This is in essence, it's a hostage negotiation. But okay,
Speaker 2: go off.
Speaker 3: So nope, you recognized us. I saw in your eyes.
Speaker 2: Here's the great part, though, According to an article in
Speaker 2: the Atlantic Wote, a Dutch foreign affairs officer offered a
Speaker 2: suggestion for solving the problem. Is there any chance of
Speaker 2: a British patrol vessel passing by the fort and somehow
Speaker 2: knocking it into the sea. You know, problem solved. It
Speaker 2: kind of reminds me of when my dad he wanted
Speaker 2: to tear down an old shed on his property, but
Speaker 2: the whole place was within a historical district and he
Speaker 2: would need special permission. He was uninterested in attaining obtaining
Speaker 2: special permission, so he quote unquote accidentally drove his seventies
Speaker 2: Chevy suburban into the shed and demolished it himself in
Speaker 2: like forty five seconds. It was an accident.
Speaker 3: What good nature did.
Speaker 2: That's what the Dutch wanted the Brits to do, just
Speaker 2: kind of. I mean, I respect that line of thinking. Sure,
Speaker 2: I'm glad they didn't go through with that, though, because
Speaker 2: I've grown very fond of sealand don't know if you
Speaker 2: can tell so in sealand prison, Poots is clean in
Speaker 2: the bathrooms. He's on coffee duty. He has to make
Speaker 2: the coffee. He only spends two months in prison there
Speaker 2: and he negotiates his own release. He's a lawyer.
Speaker 3: Imagine words.
Speaker 2: He was fined seventy five thousand Deutsche marks, which was
Speaker 2: around like thirty seven grand, and he's granted a pardon.
Speaker 3: Just to buy his way out.
Speaker 2: He bought his way out. When he's released, Prince Roy
Speaker 2: tells reporters we're friends now, and Poots later gets hired
Speaker 2: by the family to represent them when they filed charges
Speaker 2: against some Dutch invaders. So that is the power of
Speaker 2: restorative justice. Everybody things even out over time for the
Speaker 2: nation of Sealand, but there were still little bumps in
Speaker 2: the road. In nineteen eighty seven, the UK extended its
Speaker 2: territorial waters from three nautical miles to twelve nautical miles. Oh,
Speaker 2: thereby put Sealand within its limits. What does Sealand do?
Speaker 2: In response, they you know, they don't take anybody's guff.
Speaker 2: They extended their own territorial waters from three nautical miles
Speaker 2: to twelve nautical miles. I see you, I raise you
Speaker 2: now they're six off shore, which means that like they'reaging.
Speaker 2: So they also started issuing a passport around this time.
Speaker 2: They issued around three hundred passports. They personally vetted every
Speaker 2: single one.
Speaker 3: Did anyone use them for travel.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. There were shady care I think
Speaker 2: it was like a novelty thing. They have the coolest
Speaker 2: website where you can go and buy titles like you
Speaker 2: can become a baron or a baroness, and so they
Speaker 2: you know, I suppose people had it just kind of
Speaker 2: to kick around with. But there were shady characters selling
Speaker 2: knockoff sealand passports. When Gianni Versace's murderer, Andrew Kunanan, when
Speaker 2: he was on the run, he broke into a house
Speaker 2: boat and took his own life. So that's a fact,
Speaker 2: a historical fact. The owner of the boat was a
Speaker 2: German Man who held a Sealand passport and allegedly had
Speaker 2: a car with sealand Diplomatic plates.
Speaker 3: Now that character.
Speaker 2: Sealand the contacts. So the FBI contacts Sealand and they're like,
Speaker 2: how is this all connected? And they said, I have
Speaker 2: no idea what you're talking about. Everything was forged. So
Speaker 2: that's when they start finding out there are all these
Speaker 2: like fake seaaland diplomatic materials out there. There were Moroccan
Speaker 2: hash smugglers and Russian armstealers who had fake Sealand passports
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 3: Your pirate war and I raised you at a Moroccan
Speaker 3: hashed smuggler.
Speaker 2: There were over four thousand phony passports sold at one
Speaker 2: thousand pounds each to Hong Kong citizens before Britain seated
Speaker 2: control of the territory to China in July ninety seven. Yes, wow,
Speaker 2: so sealand in ninety seven stops issuing passports after this
Speaker 2: fraud is revealed, and then and the hold was made
Speaker 2: permanent after nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: What did nine eleven have to do?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 2: After the towers fell. A lot of things changed.
Speaker 3: There after the towers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they still get thousands of passport applications. They
Speaker 2: got thousands in twenty seventeen, after the UK voted yes
Speaker 2: on Brexit and Trump won the presidency, they had like
Speaker 2: American Yeah. So it's just like people are looking for
Speaker 2: a for a paradise. In the early aughts, it was
Speaker 2: going to become a server farm, but they didn't have
Speaker 2: the electrical or cooling capacity.
Speaker 3: I was imagining let's say, like solar or some kind
Speaker 3: of geo water out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. In two thousand and seven, they announced that
Speaker 2: they were looking for a buyer with an asking price
Speaker 2: of around nine hundred and seventy seven million dollars.
Speaker 3: Excuse me, I can buy like a couple of sports teams,
Speaker 3: or I can buy sealand take your choice.
Speaker 2: It was reported that they were in talks with the
Speaker 2: website pirate Bay. Okay, but the company was only able
Speaker 2: to raise twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So sales, our marketing budget's a little tighty.
Speaker 2: They're like, look, we can barter these people down.
Speaker 3: Do you take NFTs?
Speaker 2: Oh? Hold on. So in twenty ten, WikiLeaks allegedly reached
Speaker 2: out to sealand they wanted asylum and a passport for
Speaker 2: as songe Julian Assange sealand declined. They're like, that's some
Speaker 2: messy business and I don't want Pam Anderson over here,
Speaker 2: so do your thing. Twenty twelve, it was rumored that
Speaker 2: Assange was in the process of moving the WikiLeaks servers
Speaker 2: to sealand didn't happen. And then here's my end of
Speaker 2: animal house montage for you.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Michael has been the acting head of State since
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine, and Roy and Joan retired to Spain
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six.
Speaker 3: Very UK very if they retire guns, because would be
Speaker 3: totally UK.
Speaker 2: But with God, he's like a like a nautical hard man.
Speaker 2: It's only possible to visit Sealand with an official invitation
Speaker 2: from Prince Michael. You can't just show up.
Speaker 3: What happens if you do, Like say you're on Green
Speaker 3: Peace and you're like, hey, our boat's got a problem.
Speaker 2: Like climbate, You're climbing up the ladder and he just
Speaker 2: gives you a boot to the face. Oh you full
Speaker 2: the splash. Roy passed away in twenty twelve at the
Speaker 2: age of ninety one, and in an interview in the eighties,
Speaker 2: Roy told reporters quote, I might die young or I
Speaker 2: might die old, but I will never die of boredom. Que' man.
Speaker 3: That's good. I like that.
Speaker 2: He's awesome. Joan died in twenty sixteen, so not too
Speaker 2: long after her husband. The Bates family now lives, goes
Speaker 2: to school and works in Mainland England, England, England. However,
Speaker 2: there's always at least one person on sealand Seaaland at
Speaker 2: all times, usually a single caretaker or security guard. Now
Speaker 2: the job has been handled for decades by a man
Speaker 2: named Michael Barrington, who's an old family friend. He's a
Speaker 2: dual sealand UK citizen. His official title is Head of
Speaker 2: Homeland Security. Get out Yeah, And as of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: Michael also owned a cockle fishing business. What no cockles
Speaker 2: like cockle shells, which is really dangerous, isn't that where
Speaker 2: people drown all the time? And the shorts because like the.
Speaker 3: Tide goes out divers.
Speaker 2: Oh I love abalonis. So Michael wears short shirts and
Speaker 2: goes cockle fishing and he exports to Spain, so you
Speaker 2: know he's carrying on the family legacy. As of August
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, zero COVID cases in Seaaland visitors need
Speaker 2: to show proof of a negative test before they can
Speaker 2: be pulled aboard, so keep that in mind. And of course,
Speaker 2: as you brought up, it was also recently home to
Speaker 2: a virtual showing of a joint painting and NFT exhibition
Speaker 2: put on by Subby's by Subbies.
Speaker 4: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Now to close us out, The UK's Foreign Office has
Speaker 2: said that seland Quote cannot constitute a separate independent state
Speaker 2: since it has none of the characteristics of a state,
Speaker 2: including a land territory, a fixed population and the ability
Speaker 2: to conduct international relations. Debates disagree they Michael once told
Speaker 2: a BBC journalist, we have never asked for recognition, and
Speaker 2: we've never felt the need to ask for recognition. You
Speaker 2: don't have to have recognition to be a state. You
Speaker 2: just have to fulfill the criteria of the Montevideo Convention,
Speaker 2: which is population, territory, government, and the capacity to enter
Speaker 2: into negotiation with other states. We can and we have
Speaker 2: done all these things. We've had the German ambassador visit
Speaker 2: us at one point to discuss something that was the
Speaker 2: de facto recognition. We've had communication with the President of
Speaker 2: France many years ago, but we have never asked for
Speaker 2: recognition and we don't feel we need.
Speaker 3: It's definitive. Listen, I agree with them. Yeah, you're a state.
Speaker 3: If you say you're a state.
Speaker 2: Exactly so they're the state born of a criminal takeover.
Speaker 2: Gotta love it. What's your ridiculous takeaway?
Speaker 3: Do not mess but Prince Roy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Prince Roy is a legend, as is Prince Michael.
Speaker 3: Prince Michael, but in my mind, he's a kind of
Speaker 3: what is it, a chip off the old blocking He's
Speaker 3: following your tradition, whereas it seems like Prince Roy it's
Speaker 3: just weird calling him Prince like, like, why didn't he
Speaker 3: make himself king or something else?
Speaker 2: A humble He's a humble I'm talking.
Speaker 3: About the man knows his place in the world. He
Speaker 3: knows his station in life. He's like, I am not
Speaker 3: a king. I'm but a lowly and humble prince, here
Speaker 3: to lead my people and my regal family forward. But
Speaker 3: I dig him. I find that like anybody wants to go.
Speaker 3: So I'm getting the boat. We're gonna go take over this.
Speaker 2: Again. He's a good character and I love that they
Speaker 2: put the old fort to good use. That's recycling. And
Speaker 2: my takeaway is a starting your own country isn't easy,
Speaker 2: but it's super cool.
Speaker 3: I want one of those castles that they have off
Speaker 3: the coast of England. They're not like I guess they're
Speaker 3: usually more like in lakes and stuff. You know, we'll
Speaker 3: sell it as long as you'll pay for the staff
Speaker 3: and get some tourism.
Speaker 2: The lake isle at Indus free. Yes, I want to
Speaker 2: become a baroness at.
Speaker 3: Sealand Okay, you are now a baroness.
Speaker 2: Thank you, You're welcome. That's it. You can find us
Speaker 2: online at Ridiculous Crime on both Twitter and Instagram. If
Speaker 2: you have a tip for us about a ridiculous crime.
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Speaker 2: next time. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and
Speaker 2: Zaren Burnett, produced and edited by His Royal Serene Highness,
Speaker 2: Magistrate of Ridiculous Crime Island and All Dependencies, Dave Houston.
Speaker 2: Research is by Ridiculous Crime Island Minister of Information Marissa Brown.
Speaker 2: The theme song is by Secretary of the Department of
Speaker 2: Vibes Thomas Lee and Director of the Bureau of rud
Speaker 2: Dude Management Travis Dutton. Executive producers or Cabinet Ministers Ben
Speaker 2: Bullen and Noel Brown.
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