Sealand - Page 4
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Creed O'Hanlon
THEY EMERGED FROM A RUSSET HAZE at twilight, just five nautical miles from the coast of Suffolk – a pair of grimy cement towers spanned by a rust-flecked steel tabletop. A fast, flooding tide churned the cold, mud-brown North Sea around them, and low waves edged with wind-blown spume spilled away like the wake of a ship. In the dying light, the persistent impression was that the whole structure was moving.
We were aboard a thirty-eight-foot, schooner-rigged catamaran on a passage ‘down Channel' from Lowestoft, running fast before a easy nor'easterly that we prayed we might carry as far as the Scilly Isles and out into the Atlantic. All afternoon, the low coastline to leeward of us had been a thin, grey-brown smear, pierced here and there by a sliver of church spire or chimney. As much to relieve our boredom as to satisfy a mild curiosity, we plotted a course inshore towards a tiny symbol on the chart marked ‘fort'. This was all that indicated the existence of Sealand, the only surviving, man-made microtopia, a pioneering seastead that had somehow clung to independence and crypto-sovereignty for over forty years.
Paddy Bates, an entrepreneurial pirate radio broadcaster, took over what was then a decommissioned World War II gun emplacement and fortified barracks in 1967. HM Fort Roughs had been built above the Rough Sands bank off Harwich, in 1942, to deter the Germans from mining the approaches to this strategically important port. Renamed Sealand by Bates, who renamed himself ‘Prince Roy', its history since then has been colourful – stand-offs with the British Navy, court challenges to its self-proclaimed sovereignty, invasion by German and Dutch civilians and the kidnap of ‘Prince Roy's son', indirect links to passport scams and other crimes, failed business ventures and even fire. Eight years ago, Sealand finally established a modest ‘national' economy when a data-hosting company, HavenCo, set up its servers within the fort and turned it into a discreet, secure, offshore ‘data haven'. Tourists are rarely welcome.
There was plenty of water beneath our shallow keels so we circled the fort at a distance of a cable or so before rounding up down-tide of it. We let the boat fore-reach slowly into the flood for a few minutes as we took a closer look. A squat, flat-roofed bungalow straddled the tabletop. The shadowy lip of a helicopter pad hung out over the sea. Tendrils of green-black marine vegetation and crusty barnacles clung to the mottled cement and we caught a whiff of something dank and fishy on the wind.
It was drear and foreboding, with scant evidence of any human presence. I tried to imagine how grim an urban dystopia would have to be to compel me to take refuge in this outpost, even for a day. It was more like a prison than a version of paradise.
We put the helm a-lee and let the catamaran drift astern before turning away from the wind. Slack sheets rattled in their blocks as the sails filled again. The hulls lifted and the wide decks flexed as the catamaran began to make way. Sealand fell away astern and for a moment it felt as if we were fleeing for our lives from it.
Maybe we were. ♦