CELEBRATING RADIO CAROLINE—648 ON YOUR AM DIAL

“WHAT’S A ‘DIAL,’ GRANDPA?” And, for that matter, what’s “AM” besides time to get up for the day?

Caroline logo on the ship’s starboard (its right side for us land-lubbers). Image from ABC News/Tom Rivers.

Tom Rivers, ABC News, reports “Radio Caroline, Britain’s Pirate Radio Station Broadcasting from Sea, Turns 60 Years Strong,” May 18, 2024. Here are tidbits gleaned from his report.

What? No Beatles?? Tom Rivers shares a scary tale indeed: “As broadcaster and author Ray Clark points out, the radio landscape was very, very different then: ‘Back in the ’60s, kids in America had a wealth of radio stations to listen to,’ Clark told ABC News. ‘Here in the U.K., we had one, the BBC, and they hadn’t discovered The Beatles. We needed Radio Caroline, from a ship three miles off the coast, to hear that pop music that we craved for.’ ”

“The story begins in 1964,” describes Rivers, “when a maverick Irish businessman by the name of Ronan O’Rahilly decided to break the BBC monopoly and set-up a station on a ship in international waters off the English coast.” He chose the MV Mi Amigo for broadcasting, one of several pirate stations operating in the North Sea  (and thus capable of reception on the Continent as well as the U.K.). 

Above, Ronan O’Rahilly, the late founder of Radio Caroline, next to the ship’s signature bell. (The bell can be heard at http://www.radiocaroline.co.uk.) This and following images from Offshore Echos Magazine.

It Ain’t Easy Being a Pirate. As background, see “Prince Roy, R.I.P.” at SimanaitisSays ‘way back in 2012. O’Rahilly comes up there as well.

“In 1967,” Rivers notes, “the British government passed legislation—the Marine Offences Act—to stop ship-based pirates from broadcasting, with Radio Caroline being just one of a handful of stations broadcasting from sea. Every single station complied by shutting down their operations. All except for Radio Caroline, which kept pumping out pop music to millions in the U.K. and on the European continent.”

The Caroline Mi Amigo at sea in the 1960s.

Alas, Rivers says, “A year later financial problems would hit, and Radio Caroline was raided and towed to The Netherlands by Dutch creditors where it was docked for the next four years…. The Caroline vessel, the MV Mi Amigo, eventually returned to the airwaves until it sank in the North Sea in 1980 with all of the crew members safely rescued.”

All that remains of the Caroline Mi Amigo. 

Radio Caroline Returns Until…. “But after an absence of three year,” Rivers says, “undaunted, Radio Caroline returned once more on a new ship, the sturdy former super trawler, the MV Ross Revenge, a bigger and more modern ship for the station to operate on.”

Then in 1991 disaster struck again, Rivers reports: “The MV Ross Revenge ended up losing its anchor chain and managed to drift onto the notorious Goodwin Sands in the English Channel where the crew was rescued but the ship was badly battered. It was subsequently towed back to the U.K., sadly limping into Dover harbor on England’s south coast.”

Volunteers (and a Less Monopolistic BBC) to the Rescue. Rivers brings matters up to date: “What followed was years of painstaking work by volunteers who helped patch the ship up and get it into proper working order again. Now, after all the challenges the station has faced, Radio Caroline still exists 60 years on—even if it operates slightly differently than it once did.”

“The station now broadcasts from a legal land-based studio but, for one weekend a month, crews go out to the vessel—now anchored in the English territorial waters of the Blackwater Estuary off Essex—and do their programs from there.”

AM, Plus the Internet. Rivers reports, “For DJs like Kevin Turner, who’s back on the vessel after a five-year gap, it’s a massive journey down memory lane: “60 years is a good long innings, but it’s also an opportunity to remind people that that the station is still on the air, we’re one of the few broadcasters still using AM and we’ve managed to broaden the appeal of the radio station quite a lot over the last few years.”

Plus, of course, there’s www.radiocaroline.co.uk. For me and my iMac, Radio Caroline’s basic “Quality Album Channel” generates a MEDIA_ELEMENT_ERROR (perhaps related to Chrome security?). “Radio Caroline North” won’t be on-air until 22 June 2024. On the iMac, “Radio Caroline Flashback Pop Singles from the 60s and 70s” works fine.

By contrast, my iPhone works great with Caroline’s basic station, but not with the Flashback.

You pick your gizmo and it sounds just like the 60s and 70s, y’know? ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024