Talk:Principality of Sealand/Sealand
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[edit] July, 1969 Investiture of Prince Charles
On July 1, 1969 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II invested her son Prince Charles as Prince of Wales during a ceremony at Caernarfon in the principality of Wales. The ceremony was seen on television by 200 million people worldwide. According to the July, 2000 edition of Wired magazine, Roy Bates was in a pub with his wife Joan when she "casually mentioned" to her husband 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." This is the year in which Michael Bates claims on his own web site that postage stamps first began to appear with the one word name of "Sealand" imprinted upon them.
[edit] 1972-1975 Creation of the Principality of Sealand
According to the The Independent newspaper of June 5, 2000, it was not until 1975 that Bates first decided to declare Rough Tower a sovereign independent principality, which he called Sealand. This date seems to be uncertain because an unspecified company did manufacture a limited number of collector's coins which seem to date from 1972. Whether these were minted independently or under contract to Roy Bates is not certain. A specimin marriage certificate that is shown on a web site controlled by Michael Bates is merely a British marriage certificate which has been modified. A claim on that same web site also states that passports and stamps date from 1969. Postage stamps are of an uncertain date and origin and they do not bear the legend "Principality of Sealand", but merely "Sealand".
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.
[edit] August, 1978 Rival Claims
In August 1978 It is claimed that there was "insurrection by the government under Mr. Achenbach against Roy of Sealand, who was deposed while conducting negotiations with a consortium about the sale of the state territory in contravention of the existing constitution." A few days later Roy Bates retook the sea barge fort by a helicopter attack and then he took several people hostage.
The end result of this fight on the sea barge fort was that Roy Bates had terminated the charade of acting under a form of government when Mr. Achenbach was banned from the sea fort. Mr. Achenbach claimed that he was forced "into exile" along with the constitutional government which was then put into the hands of a syndicate led by Dr. A. L. C. M. Oomen, a lawyer specializing in international law who was General Secretary of the Academy for International Law at The Hague. The history of the rival "Principality of Sealand" is continued in English under the article title of Fürstentum Sealand (the German word "fürstentum" meaning "principality" in English.) Many of the legal claims subsequently made by Roy Bates appear to be related to this same source material regarding interpretation of international law.
[edit] October, 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 transmissions from Rough Tower, but these announcements all ceased with the introduction of the Territorial Sea Act 1987. Roy Bates later stated that he did not want to test the application of the law. 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 because he was a British citizen he would be subject to the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act of 1967 if he began any new transmissions from Rough Tower.
[edit] 1988 Sealand Television
In 1988 Roy Bates entered into a contract with an American banker named Wallace Kemper to start Sealand Television on channel 5. Their plan was to construct a 1,000-foot mast on Rough Tower which would house the transmitter to reach a potential audience of 200 million by downloading a signal from the Astra satellite. Radio stations were also to be added that would broadcast on AM in Dutch and English and on FM in English.
Kemper announced plans to broadcast daily from 5 pm to 2 am, with 20 new films each month, plus sports events, music videos and variety shows. Advertising slots were offered at £10,000 for 20 seconds of prime time, and Suzanne Mizzi who had previously appeared as a topless dancer in the Loretta Swit and Peter Cook 1986 film Whoops Apocalypse, was recruited as the station’s presenter. Kemper claimed that he would ask Roy Bates to make her Sealand’s first countess.
The television scheme, like a casino plan that had been previously announced came to nothing. Sealand Television collapsed amid claims that Kemper had defrauded his partners. In 1983 it was alledged that Arab Overseas Trust & Bank, which Kemper registered in Anguilla, had been charging fees of up to $2,500 for business loans, which then failed to materialize. And in 1986 he and three other men were charged with conspiracy to defraud, involving a $3 million bank draft. At the same time, Kemper described himself as head of the European Overseas Bank. In 1988, Kemper, who was born in New Orleans in 1932, was jailed for three and a half years for fraud.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 2000 British Registration of HavenCo Ltd
On August 22, 2000, Michael Bates bought an existing dormant British company which was renamed HavenCo Limited. It was given the registration number of 04056934 by Companies House, a part of the UK Department of Trade and Industry. The registered office of HavenCo Limited was recorded at 11 Kintyre House, Cold Harbour, London, E14 9NL England. The directors were listed as Michael Roy Bates, a citizen of the United Kingdom, and Ryan Donald Lackey, who was born on March 17, 1979 and a citizen of the United States.
The world media was then led to believe that the "Principality of Sealand" had registered this company which would soon commence operations as a data haven issuing domain names authorized by the "Principality of Sealand". Ryan Lackey later learned of the 1990 court case in the USA which made it clear that Roy Bates could not register ships; that Roy Bates had no power to issue domain names and that even the mail to Roy Bates was delivered by the British Post Office. Ryan Lackey then left the HavenCo project annnounced that Roy Bates had lied to him but that he had no legal recourse against him other that to file suit in a British court of law.
[edit] 2004 Crown Estate Ownership of Rough Sands
As of November 9, 2004, the legal owner of the real property known as Rough Sands sandbar is HM Crown Estate, Marine Estates Department, Coastal Section. Because the sea barge originally known as HM Fort Roughs and now known by Ordinance Survey as Rough Tower is not land but a boat, it is classified by Crown Estate as chattel. Crown Estate own all of the surrounding sea bed between the shoreline and the twelve miles territorial limit and they have granted no licence to any entity to lay underwater cables from Rough Tower to the British mainland as originally proposed by the company known as HavenCo Ltd. Rough Sands is managed by various British Government departments concerning environmental preservation for fishing activities; dredging to preserve access to the container port of Felixtowe, Suffolk, as well as Coastguard and Trinity House to maintain safety within British territorial waters.
[edit] Supporting Documentation
Additional 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 USA court case have also been made available. Information has also been supplied by Paul John Lilburne-Byford of Chelmsford, Essex who supplied details of legal and police action taken by him involving the "Principality of Sealand". 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".
