How embarrassing! Lego Legere very kindly commented on
Chapters 28 and 31 with very useful leads about deck lights and pirate radio
stations. I have not been checking to see if any comments are left (well I am
rather new to this blogging lark) and the system did not alert me to the comments
until this week – nearly 8 weeks after the first one! Sorry Lego.
I followed up both leads and found the Chapter 31 reference
was an article in Dutch! Hans Knot set
out a history of UK pirate radio stations – ‘zeezenders’. If my translating
machine is correct, the Voice of Slough was going to be the first. On 10th October 1961 in The Times reported
the arrival of a British offshore radio. The newspaper reported that the
42-year-old journalist, John Thompson from Slough, was planning to set up his own
radio station. Thompson told the journalist that he had available a 70-ton
motor boat with a length of 65 feet, previously used as a fishing boat. The planned
anchorage would be in the vicinity of the light ship The Nore , about
three miles off the coast at Southend. The
broadcasts would have a power of 1 kW on a frequency of 980 kHz. The launch
date was set for 1 December 1961. There were several delays and eventually the
main financier, the Canadian Arnold Swanson, abandoned the project and committed
to a similar project, that he would call GBOK (Great Britain OK). He bought a
former 91 feet long and 570 tons Irish light ship - . the Lady Dixon (recognise that name?). As well as
being a radio station, the Lady Dixon would also function as a light ship. A
logo was designed (Photo) but troubles lay ahead.
The other lead
from Lego was a newspaper archive site www.newspapers.com and there I turned up an article from the
Hobbs Daily News (Hobbs is in New Mexico), dated 29 March 1962. (Photo) The
same story also ran in the Kansas City Star.
Basically the
story was about Lady Dixon having a sticky time with mud and officialdom. Swanson
maintained that he still hoped to be broadcasting by the end of the month.
However, even though two tugs managed to free the ship from the mud’s
embrace, the UK Government and the BBC were unhappy over GBOK. Swanson’s application for a ship-to-shore
radio telephone license was refused and eventually all the radio equipment was
seized. The venture collapsed. She might have been a contender to be the first
pirate radio ship in the UK, but never made it.
David
No comments:
Post a Comment