Radio Caroline History

Radio Caroline first started broadcasting at Easter 1964. I was on my school holidays and getting a little bored. I had a cassette recorder and every week I recorded the top 20 chart show from the BBC Light programme on Sunday afternoon. There was not much music on the radio those days and so I could play back the programme over and over again. I listened to some of the Dutch stations at the time and workers playtime, music while you work and listen with mother were the highlights of the BBC weekly offering. Radio Luxembourg was the only pop music station on the air during the evenings with a strong signal that faded badly. I was tuning the dial when I found a very strong signal playing pop music. Suddenly a voice said "This is a test transmission for Radio Caroline on 199 your all day music station" It was Simon Dee and Chris Moore. Little did I know how this would change my life. This was BBC Radio's biggest challenge and the beginning of a radio revolution for he UK. Soon many other stations joined them on boats and forts in the North Sea. Radio London, Radio City, Radio 390, Radio England. Britain Radio. Caroline North (Irish Sea), Radio 270 and Radio Scotland also arrived. I made my parents take holidays in Clacton so that I could visit the ships on boats from Walton on the Naze and I remember leaning over the side of the old Mi Amigo talking to Tony Blackburn and Roger Day getting them to play my requests on the Big Line up programme at 4pm. This fun went on until 1967 when the government passed a law banning these stations and all but Radio Caroline closed down.

On August 14th 1967 the government's bill to silence all the stations was made law and all the stations closed down except one and that was Radio Caroline. I was supposed to be working that day but at 2pm I disappeared into a stack of boxes of light bulbs for an hour with my transistor radio and earpiece and listened to the last hour of Radio London. I will never forget that last hour they closed with "A day in the life" by the Beatles and Paul Kay said, "Radio London is now closing down". I turned over to Caroline and heard Johnny Walker say, we welcome all the new listeners and Caroline continues. Luckily no one seemed to have missed me all that time and I still had my job. Caroline's programmes that evening were un-missable and the midnight "We shall overcome" and Johnny Walker sailing up the Thames story was legendary and radio at its best. Caroline continued for some time but found it difficult with money running out. I remember tuning in one day and there was nothing there and later in the day I heard the TV newsman say that Radio Caroline's north and south ships had been towed away to Holland due to unpaid bills although there has always been some doubt about that.

They broadcasts eventually returned from the Mi Amigo and they continued until the old ship sank in early 1980. Many people thought that they were gone forever but we know Radio Caroline and they returned in 1983 on another boat, the Ross Revenge an ex Icelandic trawler. In the hurricane of 1987 the mast , which was the highest ship born structure of that time was weakened and it blew down a week later. But they were soon back on the air when a temporary structure was erected at sea. Laser 558 joined them and although up to then the government had taken little interest in them Laser with its top 40 America style format changed all that. Caroline was relying on the Dutch programming to provide them with money to pay the bills but soon the Dutch and British governments raided the ship and closed it down taking away most of the transmitting equipment. After a couple of weeks they again returned when Peter Chicago found enough equipment to get the transmitter working again. Eventually they went adrift onto the Goodwin sands and incredibly were towed off by a Dover Harbour tug and taken to Dover. This was one of the only times a ship has been rescued from these treacherous sands. This began a remarkable comeback by Caroline. Because of a restriction order placed on the ship forbidding it to go to sea much work had to be done by the northern repair group before they could get the ship out again and all this work was carried out by volunteers free. The salvage bill was paid after great support from Dover harbour board and the Ross Revenge Support group which became the Radio Caroline Support group. The ship then moved to various locations around the Kent and Essex coast before settling at Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey where I visited the ship and saw the amount of work that had been carried out by the dedicated team. The ship was looking much more respectable now. Some money had been raised with the Radio Caroline support group and R.S.L broadcasts from the ship and one of these had taken place in London when the ship proudly sailed up the Thames to Docklands as in the Johnny Walker story. This nearly proved costly to Caroline because they only just moved the ship before the devastating IRA bomb blast that would have damaged the ship. The successful Docklands RSL raised enough money to pay for the ship to go into Chatham Dockyard for an inspection on the dent that was the result of their running aground on the Goodwin Sands.

In August 1999 the ship was moved to the end of Clacton pier for the summer and another R.S.L broadcast took place. During this time talks were taking place with an organisation that were trying to bring back Radio Luxembourg. The plan was to use the Ross Revenge as a studio moored in London Docklands and relay the programmes up to the Astra satellite from the ship until a permanent studio could be built. This would have brought in lots of money for Caroline and a rebuild of their studios. From Southend the ship was moved to a temporary mooring in the River Medway. This proved a disastrous move for the ship because at Christmas a storm blew the ship adrift, it just missed another ship and went aground on mud flats. Tugs from Medway port authority had to be called out during their Christmas break to tow them into Sheerness harbour at great expense. Since then the ship has returned to Queenborough. After all that Radio Luxembourg never returned.

Later when EKR who were broadcasting from the Maidstone studio's ran out of money they offered some free airtime to Caroline. Caroline decided to take up the offer and gradually the hours of transmission were increased until they were broadcasting seven days a week. When the analogue closedown took place Caroline decided to go digital and after a break of a month resumed in splendid digital quality from Maidstone. Broadcasts were also streamed from the web by the Dutch supporters on www.radio-caroline.nl

In August 2004 to celebrate their 40th birthday they moved the ship from Rochester to the ferry landing stage in Tilbury. They had an RSL covering much of South Essex and North Kent on Medium Wave sending the signal over to the Maidstone studio's using an ADSL link to uplink to Sky, Worldspace and the Internet.

Presently Radio Caroline are now broadcasting from another studio in Maidstone, using an expensive link to get the signal up to London for uplinking to the Eurobird satellite to Sky Digital EPG 0199 but the audio signal is in mono. Their signal is also uplinked to the AfriStar Satellite for Worldspace Radio's, this is a portable radio with a small satellite dish attached to it that covers most of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The Internet stream is now in super stereo and usually very solid and listeners can tune in all over the World. They are also heard on DAB occasionally in Italy and on Saturday and Sunday nights can be heard on FM on the French and Italian Riviera's.

This has all be achieved with thanks to many unpaid volunteers that have worked tirelessly for the station. Remember, Caroline can be anywhere.

by Roland Beaney

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