Principality of Sealand

 The point of view from others:

The Principality of Sealand is a famous unrecognised micronation located on HM Fort Roughs, a decommissioned World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea. Situated about 11 kilometres off the coast of Suffolk, it was founded in September 1967 when former British major Paddy Roy Bates seized the platform from pirate radio broadcasters.

The platform was originally built by the British military in 1943 during World War II to defend the coastline from German aircraft. In 1967, Paddy Roy Bates claimed it as a sovereign state, eventually naming it Sealand and establishing his family as the ruling monarchs.

Over the years, the Principality of Sealand has defended its borders several times: The Royal Navy Clash (1968): British authorities attempted to remove Bates' son, Michael, and were repelled by warning shots and petrol bombs, resulting in Paddy Roy Bates being brought to British court, which ultimately declared that the fort was outside British jurisdiction.

The 1978 Coup: 

A group of German and Dutch businessmen, who had been invited by Bates to discuss business plans, temporarily took over the platform while Roy Bates was away. Michael Bates and his allies organized a counter-raid using helicopters, retook the island, and temporarily held the invaders as prisoners of war before eventually releasing them.

Throughout its existence, Sealand has developed its own flag, currency, passports, and a national anthem. In 1987, the United Kingdom extended its territorial waters from 3 to 12 nautical miles. This shift brought the platform within British territory, although the UK government has generally opted to leave the self-proclaimed micronation alone. Today, the unique outpost is still maintained and managed by the Bates family and offers official e-citizen programs to supporters worldwide. 

The Principality of Sealand 

The point of view by Sealanders:

The Principality of Sealand is a sovereign state on a wartime sea fort in the North Sea, and the smallest country on earth. Its founder, Prince Roy Bates, declared it independent on 2 September 1967, and it has governed itself every day since, with its own flag, constitution, currency, passports and royal lineage. Nearly sixty years on, it is followed by more than 1.5 million people worldwide, with E-Citizens registered in 137 countries.

It began as a secret of the war

Long before it was a country, it was a weapon.

In 1942, at the height of the Second World War, Britain built a string of fortresses out in the North Sea. Their guns were meant to shoot down German aircraft and the mines they laid in the shipping lanes. One of them, Roughs Tower, was floated out on a barge and sunk onto a sandbar: two hollow concrete towers carrying a steel deck, manned by gun crews who watched the grey water for the enemy.

Often mistaken today for an oil rig, the structure was nothing of the kind. It was a sea fort, and when the war ended its purpose ended with it. The Navy stripped the guns of their firing parts, took off the men, and left it to the wind and the gulls. The great anti-aircraft barrels stayed where they stood, pointing out at an enemy that never came again. For two decades the fort stood empty in the North Sea, a forgotten relic of a war the world was trying to move past.

It would not stay forgotten. The fortress that Britain abandoned was about to become the unlikeliest nation on earth.

1942

Roughs Tower is built

A wartime sea fort floated out and sunk onto a North Sea sandbar to defend the shipping lanes.

1945

Abandoned to the sea

The war ends. The garrison leaves and the guns fall silent. The fort is left empty for twenty years.

Prosecuted for playing music. So he founded a country.

A wounded soldier, a state monopoly, and the day he ran out of sea.

Roy Bates had already given his country more than most. He served as a Major in the Royal Fusiliers, fighting through North Africa and Italy, wounded by gunfire to the face and limbs, and carried those wounds for the rest of his life. He was proud of his service. He once said that, for all the paradox of what came later, he would do it again if his country needed him.

By the mid-1960s he had found a new cause. Britain's airwaves belonged to a single state broadcaster, which decided what the nation could hear. Roy ran a pirate radio station, Radio Essex, beaming the pop music the monopoly would not, to a public that could not get enough of it. He broadcast it from an old wartime fort called Knock John.

The government came after him. In 1966 Roy was prosecuted and fined for broadcasting without a licence, the court ruling that Knock John lay inside British waters. His son Michael, then a boy at boarding school, spent that day at a payphone trying to learn whether his father had been fined or jailed for giving the public what they craved. A man who had bled for Britain was now a convicted criminal in its eyes, for the crime of playing music.

So he looked further out to sea. There was another fort, Roughs Tower, beyond the three-mile limit and beyond the reach of any British court. Roy took it. But he did not put the transmitter back on the air. Standing on that platform in open water, answerable to no one, he saw something larger than a radio station. He would not ask Britain for a licence again. He would not ask Britain for anything. He would raise a flag and found a country of his own.

On 2 September 1967, Roy Bates declared Roughs Tower an independent state: the Principality of Sealand. He crowned his wife Joan a princess, on her birthday, in what was as much a romantic gesture as a political one. Their motto came from the water that surrounded them: E Mare Libertas, From the Sea, Freedom.

It would have been easy to dismiss as a stunt. But the Bates family did what founders of nations do. They wrote a constitution. They issued passports and stamps. They minted currency bearing Joan's likeness. They built a government, declared a national identity, and prepared to defend it. Within weeks, as the declassified record would later show, the new nation had reached the highest levels of the British government. 

Sealand Fire

In June 2006, a fire tore through Sealand's north deck, gutting the fortress, leaving devastation in its wake.

The first thing Mike Barrington, Sealand's Head of Homeland Security, said when he surveyed the wreckage: "We won't let a silly little thing like a fire stop us."

He was right. Within a year, Sealand was rebuilt. Still standing. Still sovereign.

E-Citizens 

Sealand e-Citizens can claim their own personalised @sealand.io email address.

E-Citizenship also includes a secure VPN, support for ocean cleanup through Sealand's partnership with 4ocean, access to exclusive opportunities, and participation in the future development of Sealand.

Founded in rebellion against censorship and government overreach, Sealand's E-Citizenship programme is designed to help people participate in a global community built around freedom, innovation, and self-determination.

Learn more at the Sealand Government Website:

sealandgov.org

E Mare Libertas 🌊

Truth News Ireland is Proud to Announce its Affiliation with the Principality of Sealand Newspaper.