Raidio Carúilín - The Irishness of Radio Caroline including the Judge, the Port, the Owner and a Rebel

 

Sixty years ago, a Clondalkin born Dubliner, Ronan O’Rahilly became a legend and began a revolution of the airwaves. Ronan, who passed away in 2020 was the grandson of ‘The O’Rahilly’ who died during the 1916 Rising. On Easter Sunday March 29th 1964, broadcasting from a converted passenger ferry, the MV Fredericia, off the coast off Essex, Radio Caroline began regular transmissions. It would cause a tsunami of change in the broadcasting and music worlds. There was a large Irish dimension to the station because not only was its founder born in Dublin but the ferry was converted into the iconic radio station at the County Louth port of Greenore, owned by Ronan’s father Aodoghan.

 

Moreen House in Clondalkin where Ronan was born

In July 1964, when Caroline merged with another offshore pirate ship Radio Atlanta, the original MV Caroline was moved from its moorings off the east coast of England to a new location off Ramsey in the Isle of Man and was renamed as Radio Caroline North. It became an instant hit across Ireland broadcasting initially on 199m and later 259m medium wave. Noel, a brother of Eamonn Andrews, who famously presented What’s My Line and This is Your Life on TV, had been working as a sports reporter for Radio Eireann. He found himself broadcasting his first music show ‘The Andrews Live’ on Radio Caroline on Tuesday December 1st 1964 as Caroline was now averaging a listenership in the British Isles of 28 million every day. The first track he played was from fellow Irishmen ‘The Batc    helors’ who were now heading for stardom in Britain and managed by major Caroline investor Belfast born Phil Solomon. Noel proved to be a popular broadcaster with the housewives. He had previously been on Radio Eireann presenting the ‘Housewives Choice’ programme. When he returned to Radio Eireann from Radio Caroline, he was briefly relegated to presenting Children’s programmes.

 (Hear Noel Andrews on Caroline HERE courtesy of offshoreradio.co.uk)

When Caroline arrived off the Manx coast, their transmissions were heard across Ireland and with it an opportunity to grab some of the lucrative advertising pie. With this in mind, Jim Craig was appointed Caroline’s representative in Ireland and they opened offices in August 1964 at 27 Molesworth Street, dubbed Caroline House. Today that building is incorporated into Buswells Hotel, directly across the road from Leinster House. 

The holding company for Caroline was known as Planet Productions Limited with a subsidiary Planet Productions Eire Limited looking after the advertising for the stations. On August 1st 1964 in advance of the introduction of new UK laws, two directors of the Irish company, London based Richard Trapnell and Dublin born Herman Good resigned. According to the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame,

‘His friend Christopher Moore, a club DJ, provided the musical knowledge and having served in the Merchant Navy, some nautical experience too. Moore introduced O'Rahilly to a friend of his, Ian Ross. They met one lunchtime around Easter 1963. O'Rahilly told Ross of his plans. Ross was impressed by the project and thought that his father might be interested in investing. Mr Ross Senior worked in the city and was an expert in raising venture capital. That afternoon they squashed themselves into Ian Ross's MG sports car and set off to the family home in Haslemere, Surrey. By that evening the deal had been done. His father put in some of his own cash, as did his friend John Sheffield, chairman of the Norcros Group of companies. Together they and their firms put up over 80% of the launch capital - some £250,000 in all. Other investors included Sheffield's son-in-law Jocelyn Stevens, then proprietor of Queen magazine, and Dublin lawyer Herman Good. They all recognised the plan had potential.’

American born Chris Moore helped Ronan source the MV Frederica and when the ship had been converted into Radio Caroline, he was the first voice heard on Easter Saturday 1964, playing the very first record The Rolling Stones’s ‘Not Fade Away’.

The news of the resignations were reported in the Evening Herald on September 20th 1964,

The resignations of District Justice Herman Good, chairman and director, and Mr. R. L. Trapnell (London), director, Planet Productions Ltd., selling agents for Radio Caroline became effective as from August 1st it was announced at a meeting of the board of directors.

 

The interesting fact here is that Mr. Good, a solicitor, had been appointed as a temporary District Court Judge earlier that year in February 1964. His position as judge was confirmed in May 1968 when he was officially sworn in by the future President of Ireland Cearbhaill O’Dalaigh and would have been a serving judge when MV Caroline was being fitted out in Greenore and when he was director of Radio Caroline. It was nor Justice Good’s first brush with pirate radio. Following a raid by the Gardai on Radio Romeo illegal broadcasting from Clontarf in July 1965, in January 1966 father and son Thomas and Michael Rogers and Brian Clancy were charged with illegal broadcasting. They were defended by their solicitor Herman Good, he told the court,

‘This is not a second Radio Caroline’.

The father was fined one pound while the teenagers including his son were fined one shilling each. Brian Clancy gave his address as the Grand Hotel, Wicklow which was owned by his family.

Herman Good was born Herman Good Gudansky in June 1906 in Dublin. In 1933 he married Belfast born Sybil Wine and they lived on Merton Road in Rathmines. Justice Good would pass away in November 1981.

The station also pandered to its blossoming Irish audience by broadcasting Ireland’s Top 30 Chart Show compiled by the New Spotlight magazine from April 1967. The top two that first week were Sandie Shaw’s ‘Puppet on a String’ at number one and Sean Dunphy’s Eurovision entry ‘If I Could Choose’ at number two. For The Dubliners and Caroline "plugging" promoted success in the entertainment world. According to Luke Kelly, plugging made them one of the first groups based in Ireland to sell their music to the British public. Four years earlier they were just nonentity’s, folk-singing around the public houses of Dublin. Then with the assistance of Solomon, they could command fees of up to £6OO per night, performing all over the UK, including London's Albert Hall. The station created the Caroline Showband and in 1965 was instrumental in getting Longford born Larry Cunningham to become the first Irish artiste to enter the British charts and a subsequent appearance on BBC’s Top of the Pops. When the American singer Jim Reeves, who Cunningham had supported on tour in Ireland, was tragically killed in a plane crash, Sligo based solicitor Eddie Masterson wrote ‘A Tribute to Jim Reeves’ which Larry recorded on King Records with his showband the Mighty Avons. One of the Mighty Avon musicians was Jimmy Smith who would set up the very successful Dublin based country and western pirate radio station TTTR in the 1980’s.

On August 14th 1967, the British Government introduced the new Marine Offences Act to curtail the success of the offshore pirates. The radio ships and forts could no longer be supplied from the British Mainland and advertising revenue was restricted. This immediately affected Caroline South who renamed themselves as Radio Caroline International but North continued as normal as the Isle of Man Government held out against their Westminster masters until September 1st to ratify the new law, described in the Manx Parliament as Black Friday.

With the British mainland and now the Isle of Man cut from resupplying Caroline North, the Drogheda Argus reported on September 15th,

‘Another chapter in the Marine Broadcasting controversy began last Thursday afternoon, when a 40-ton Dutch tender entered Dundalk quays. Twenty four hours later, the tender, Offshore III, left the wharf laden with groceries for Radio Caroline. The supplies consisted of breed, milk, meat and vegetables, and were purchased in a Dundalk store. Fresh water was also put on board. It is generally assumed that these supplies are for the crew and personnel of the "sound of the notion" Radio Caroline North.’

 

In February 1968, the Dundalk port authority’s annual returns shows that in 1967, the port had 268 movements in and out, 21 of these in four months were made by Radio Caroline’s supply boat, making up 8% of the movements. The 40 ton tender Offshore III was owned by the Wijsmuller Brothers in Holland and arrived in to Dundalk to collect, fuel, water and food for the crew and equipment. Three tenders were operated out of Holland by the Wijsmuller brothers. 'Offshore I' and 'Offshore II' supplied the ship on the east coast of England while the larger 'Offshore III' supplied Caroline North. Prior to the new Marine Offences Act the Offshore III would load in Douglas or Dublin to resupply Caroline.

According to the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame,

‘Although the two Caroline ships were continuing to broadcast, behind the scenes, it was a tough time. The isolated DJs had to endure long stints at sea and dreadful tender journeys when they did finally get some leave. And, for the bosses, the financial situation was proving difficult. With the ships being supplied and crewed from Holland, the station's money problems were exacerbated when the UK devalued the pound in November 1967. With only a limited income, bills weren't paid on time and, as the months passed, a substantial debt built up with the Wijsmuller tug and salvage company. This firm was responsible for crewing and servicing the two radio ships and, as the money owed reached £70,000, one of the Wijsmuller brothers decided that enough was enough. In an effort to get his money, he ordered his men to impound the two Caroline vessels. On March 2nd 1968 Caroline North's programming finished, as usual on a Saturday, with the late ‘Daffy’ Don Allen’s ‘Country & Western Jamboree’. Canadian born Don would be found later broadcasting on numerous Irish pirate radio stations including Radio West in Mullingar and even had a show on RTE FM3, the forerunner of Lyric FM. Soon after the station closed for the night the ship was boarded by men working for Wijsmuller. Caroline North never returned to the air, the ship was towed by the Wijsmuller tug Utrecht.

 

In November 1968 before the High Court in Dublin a winding up order was placed before Mr. Justice Kenny to wind up Planet Productions Limited moving all Caroline’s operations abroad.

Caroline still broadcasts from the Ross Revenge ship off the East coast of England but is now licensed but the music style and ethos is still the same and can be heard clearly at night in Ireland on 648khz.

 

Radio Caroline revolutionized radio for a generation, shining a light on a dark world. It led to the creation of BBC Radio 1 to compete for the ever-growing audience of young listeners. It provided an outlet for new music and it gave enjoyment to millions. There’s a reverence for what Caroline was. It was a rebel, it was an influencer, it was a genuine attempt to provide the listening public with what they wanted to hear.

 

In Ireland, Caroline opened up the possibility of an alternative to State media, and while we never had a pirate radio ship broadcasting into the country, Caroline’s success created a community of pirate radio pioneers across Ireland (some using the Caroline moniker in homage) and this pirate radio tidal wave eventually in the seventies and eighties, created the radio industry that broadcasts today.

Sources

The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame

DX Archive

World Radio History

The 1965 Radio Caroline Annual

The Irish Newspaper Archives

The British Newspaper Archives

National Inventory of Architectural Heritage Ireland

The Irish National Archives

Offshore Radio

Paul Rusling

Ancestry.com

The Beginning, the Middle and the End of Monaghan’s Radio Caroline North

 The Beginning, the Middle and the End of Monaghan’s Radio Caroline North

 

For numerous weekends throughout the year, a piece of pirate radio nostalgia wafts it way over the airwaves courtesy of Manx Radio on the Isle of Man. Manx Radio transforms into Radio Caroline North which was once an offshore pirate radio station on board the MV Caroline[1] ship. The ship was anchored off the Manx coast from July 1964 until March 1968[2] following the introduction of the new Marine Offences Act aimed at the closing the growing number of offshore pirate radio stations bombarding UK and Irish listeners. Radio Caroline North quickly grew a large following across Ireland. While offshore pirate Radio Caroline North closed in 1968, onshore pirate station Radio Caroline North met a swift end outside the small County Monaghan village of Scotshouse in November 1975. This is their story.

It starts back in 1971 with Sean McQuillan from Clones and another station Radio 99. It opened in April 1971 broadcasting on 199m Medium wave and set up by four friends to broadcast a non-political content with a diet of country and western music. The station was originally located in a spare bedroom in McQuillan’s house. The station later moved to a disused house just inside the County Fermanagh border and was on air three hours Saturday and Sunday nights from 9.30pm opening each night with their signature tune Slim Whitman’s ‘What’s the World a Coming To’.

The station provided a postal address for requests of 6, Millbrook, Clones, County Monaghan but after just a couple of months on air the station was closed by loyalist paramilitaries who intimated the young broadcasters forcing them to close and move their transmitter south of the nearby border in the middle of the night using a boat on the River Finn which was the border.

The station operators moved to Dunsrim near Scotshouse in County Monaghan with studios now housed in a caravan. The transmitter was built by Clones man Sean McQuillan using an ex-US army transmitter. The station actually had three small transmitters two located south of the border and one north of the border across the River Finn. In an interview with the Meath Chronicle^[3], McQuillan revealed that in order to stay one step of the authorities the station moved locations ‘3 or 4 times’ and that they used old shirts and ladies knickers to disguise the ‘60ft aerial from detection by army helicopters that flew passed every morning’.

 

In September 1971 the station went off the air, bemoaned by many letter writers to local newspapers. One month later Radio 99 was back on the air with a better transmitter and signal. The station closed in June 1973 when the Gardai traced the caravan used by the station to a mountain side where they had moved to get their signal out to a wider audience. It would return a year later as Radio Caroline North. The station was now broadcasting on 266m and newspaper reports stated that the DJ’s, all using pseudonyms, were ‘Jim West, Brian Barry and Alan Gordon’. The station was broadcasting live on Sunday’s from 2pm to 5.30pm with a mixture of ‘pop, top twenty and international, hard rock, Irish and American country music and all the latest Irish showband releases.’ The station broadcast on Wednesday nights from 10pm to midnight.

He help with the costs of running the station, the station organised a gala night of music in the Bunnoe Hall, Cavan in February 1975. The music was supplied by the showband Gay Mac and The Seasons. The end however for Monaghan’s Radio Caroline North in November 1975. Gardai led by Garda Sergeant William Weldon[4] visited the suspected site of the station on Friday November 21^st 1975. They discovered the caravan in a field in the Dunsrim area near Scotshouse. On Sunday, with the station on the air and using their Garda car to identify the station, they visited the station and closed it down, seizing all the equipment including the homemade transmitter that had been built by Sean McQuillan. They also arrested three men, brothers Owen Smyth, aged 24, Charlie Smyth, aged 23 both from Scotshouse and Andrew Slowey aged 22 from Enagh, Lisnageer.

 

The following September, the three pirate broadcasters were in Clones district court where they pleaded guilty to breaking the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. In the caravan Garda Sergeant Weldon said in court that they seized a transmitter, tape recorder, record player and records. Garda Weldon told the court the Gardai were satisfied there was nothing sinister or subversive in the broadcasts. All the defendants came from highly respectable families.

 

For the defendants, solicitor Mr. J.P. Black said that the station was a hobby. The defendants had gathered up the equipment and used it to play this country and western music on Sunday evenings. He told the presiding Judge that the equipment was worth about £200 and would be forfeited unless the Judge ordered otherwise. In response to the defence solicitor said that,

‘the very possession of such equipment in these times is very serious as it could get into the wrong hands. There must be forfeiture of the equipment.’

There was a plea for the Probation act to be applied to the defendants but they were convicted and fined £10 each and the equipment confiscated.

It may not have helped the station’s ability to avoid interest from the authorities that the two Smyth brothers were members of the local Sinn Fein Cumman. The authorities were cognisant of the fact that just across the border the Troubles were intense and the use of the airwaves for illegal propaganda broadcasts had been an issue.

Because the station was providing airplay to the many Showbands who had recorded singles, in November the Sunday Independent reported that Showband manager were bemoaning the loss of this valuable outlet for their artists.

‘Showband managers are making a bid to get a pirate radio station back "on air" despite the fact that a powerful radio transmitter and other broadcasting equipment was seized by the gardai near the Border. The seizure meant that ‘Radio Caroline North’ which had been broadcasting for the past two years on 266 metres medium wave over a fifty-mile radius of the Monaghan Fermanagh border was silenced. The pirate station received an average of a hundred requests weekly from listeners all over the area. “Several of the top names in Irish showbands have also recorded special spots for our shows”, the spokesman said. Mr. Tony Loughman, who is head of Top Rank Promotions, said: "We think it’s a pity to see this station being put off the air.’

Sean McQuillan would maintain an interest in pirate radio and would assist writer Pat McCabe to set up Radio Butty in 2006 for the local Flatlake festival with that station located in a VW van and later a caravan.

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[1] The Mi Amigo remained off the Essex coast and broadcast as Radio Caroline South

[2] The vessel was seized in a financial dispute and a tug towed it to Amsterdam

[3] October 6^th 2016

[4] Later a Garda instructor