The Story of Sealand

 
Located six miles off the eastern shores of Britain, Sealand is one of four Maunsell Naval Sea Forts deployed by Britain during World War 2. It was originally called Roughs Tower, and was used to monitor and report German minelaying in the waters off England. During the war, it was home to 150-300 personnel, radar equipment, two 6-inch guns, and two 40mm anti-aircraft autocannons, but was abandoned by the Royal Navy in 1956.

The structure Sealand is built upon is technically a very large sunken ship, due to the way it was deployed. It was built in 1942 on a pontoon barge at Red Lion Wharf as a superstructure of two hollow concrete towers topped with a deck, upon which other structures could be added. The twin towers were divided into seven floors each, which provided dining and sleeping accommodations, and storage areas for generators and munitions. When it was completed, three tugboats towed it out of to the Rough Sands sandbar six miles off the coast, where it’s pontoon base was deliberately flooded to allow the structure to settle onto the sea floor.

Once Roughs Tower’s wartime duties were done, and the Royal Navy had cleaned it out, it sat unoccupied for a number of years. It's first new tenants appeared sometime in 1967, when a group of pirate radio broadcasters – operating out of nearby anchored ships – wanted a place to land their resupply helicopters. But in September of that year, a competing broadcaster, and former Major of the British Army gone fisherman/pirate, named Roy Bates, physically evicted Roughs Tower’s illegal tenants, and became a squatter himself.

Roy Bates had previously operated a low-power station called Radio Essex from another sea barge, but it had been within the 3-mile area of British legal control, and he had been caught and fined. So he and his 15-year-old son Michael gathered up the equipment, hauled it out to the Roughs Tower, and after a prolonged fight, took over control. But the tower never did become home to pirate radio, as English laws changed soon thereafter to make seaborne pirate transmissions illegal even outside of the 3-mile radius.

Nonetheless, Roy Bates maintained his control of Roughs Tower, and declared it the Principality of Sealand; a sovereign, independent state. This was after consulting with an attorney who found a loophole allowing Roy to claim the fort due to fact that it had been built illegaly in international waters, and that it was up for grabs due to “dereliction of sovereignty.” Since it was outside of England’s legally controlled area there was nothing the Royal Navy could do about this, but they did demolish another fort that stood beyond the 3-mile boundary, to prevent a similar takeover there.

In 1967, when the Ministry of Defence tried to evict Sealand, sending out navy helicopters and the Royal Maritime auxiliary vessel Golden Eye for what Prince Roy liked to call the Battle of Roughs Tower. Gunshots and molotov cocktails were fired back - as a "warning". Prince Roy was hauled to court, but a judge ruled that the platform was outside the three-mile limit of territorial waters, making the prince immune from his order.

The legitimacy of this self-declared state would be put to the test when Michael Bates fired a warning shot at a British Trinity House vessel which approached the tower. This led to Roy Bates’ arrest when he next arrived on the mainland. The case against Roy and Michael Bates was brought to court, where the judge ruled that Sealand was outside of British jurisdiction, therefore no ruling could be made against the Bates boys for their actions. The authorities decided not to appeal this ruling, as it may have led to an undesirable precedent.

Things were relatively calm for a time after that. Roy was approached by a few shady groups seeking to use his platform for their own ends, including smugglers, but he turned them all away, insisting that he would do nothing to harm the UK. Sealand proclaimed the Constitution of the Principality in 1975, and developed a flag, a national anthem, postage stamps, currency, and passports in the following years. The national seal was designed to incorporate Sealand’s national motto of “E Mare Libertas,” meaning, “From the Sea, Freedom.”

In August of 1978, about ten years after independence was declared, Roy was approached by a consortium of German and Dutch diamond merchants who wanted him to fly to Austria to entertain a business proposition. Upon their arrival, he and his wife Joan were met by five men who arranged for a meeting later that day, but the meeting time came and went without any word from the men. Concerned, Roy and his wife tried to make contact with their son Michael at Sealand, but since there was no phone or radio on the artificial island, they had to call local fishermen and the coast guard. “I saw a big helicopter hovering over Sealand,” one of them reported. Things were beginning to look very suspicious.

Their worries were confirmed when they finally heard from Michael, many days later. Jet skis and a helicopter had arrived at Sealand, claiming to have a Telex from Roy warranting the handover of Sealand. Upon landing, however, they had taken the platform by force. The invaders locked Michael in a cell for three days without food or water, then put him aboard a Dutch vessel which dropped him off in Holland with no money and no passport. Determined to reclaim the tiny artificial island, the Bates family enlisted armed assistance, including a helicopter pilot who had done some work on James Bond movies. They headed back to Sealand to storm the fortress and take back their country. When they arrived, Michael slid down the rope onto the deck armed with a shotgun, firing shots into the air, and the intruders quickly surrendered.

A man named Alexander G. Achenbach, a Sealand citizen who had in fact drafted Sealand's 1975 constitution, was behind the coup d’état, having enlisted a team of "mercenaries" to carry out the attack. Several of the men involved in the coup admitted they had "done wrong" and were released. However, Gernot Pütz, Achenbach’s lawyer who was also involved, held a Sealand passport, leading Roy to consider executing him for treason. Ultimately it was decided he was to be held as a prisoners of war unless he paid DM 75,000 (more than £23,000). In the face of Pütz’s imprisonment, the German government petitioned the British government for his release but the United Kingdom disavowed his it, citing the 1968 court decision. A German diplomat was sent from its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate for Pütz’s release and after several weeks of negotiations Roy Bates relented, subsequently claiming that the diplomat's visit constituted de facto recognition of Sealand by Germany.

Following the former's repatriation, Achenbach and Gernot Pütz established a government in exile, sometimes known as the Sealand Rebel Government or Sealandic Rebel Government, in Germany. Achenbach's appointed successor, Johannes Seiger, continues to claim via his website that he is Sealand's legitimate ruling authority.

Not much exciting has happened there since the miniature war of ’78. Roy was approached by a group of Argentinians during the Falklands War, wanting to buy Sealand and set up camp “right on Britain’s doorstep”, and in 1997 law officers in Slovenia found that forged diplomatic papers from the Principality of Sealand were used to open bank accounts through which the proceeds of illegal pyramid investment schemes in eastern Europe were channelled. Examining further evidence, police found that 4,000 forged Sealand passports had been sold, for around £1000 each, to Hong Kong citizens before the handover to China in July of the same year. This, and other similar money laundering operations, led the Bates family to revoke all Sealand passports that had been issued over the previous twenty-two years (estimated at around 150,000 in number).

After a fire broke out on the top platform in June of 2006, a Royal Air Force helicopter had to be called in to transfer one person to Ipswich hospital, however no one was seriously injured and all damage was repaired by November. Most recently, The Pirate Bay attempted to purchase Sealand in 2007 after harsher copyright measures in Sweden forced them to look for a base of operations elsewhere in order to store its server and continue allowing people to download music for free. Shortly after Sealand was offered for sale through the Spanish estate company InmoNaranja with and asking price of no less than €750 million.

On 9 October 2012, Roy Bates, self-declared Prince of Sealand, died after suffering Alzheimer's disease for several years. He has been succeeded by his son Michael.

The best version of the story - with all the fascinating details of the bureaucratic battle with the British government and its post office, the full story behind Professor Achenbach and his attempted coup, as well as a many entertaining sub-plots - is to be found in its 80 page entirety, here:

http://illinoislawreview.org/wp-content/ilr-content/articles/2012/2/Grimmelmann.pdf