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 Batchelors’ 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, andMr. R. L. Trapnell (London), director,
Planet Productions Ltd., sellingagents 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
When Mrs. Kathleen Durnin from
Dunleer in County Louth tuned into the offshore pirate radio station Radio
Caroline in February 1965 little did she know she would appear in an Irish court
just weeks later, and she wouldn’t be the only one. When the MV Caroline
travelled from the North Sea to a new anchorage off Ramsey in the Isle of Man,
Radio Caroline’s popularity across Ireland soared to new heights.
As she listened, she heard the
‘Ognib Show’ hosted by the comic actor Charlie Drake. ‘Ognib’ was the reversal
of the word Bingo. Bingo via the radio became a new and popular phenomenon and
Irish listeners like Mrs. Durnin were hooked.
One of the most popular radio
bingo programmes, also heard loud and clear in Ireland was Radio Luxembourg’s, ‘Postal
Bingo Show’ that was linked to the Durham Postal Bingo operated by Derek Killingsworth
Armstrong. The Bingo had at its height in early 1965, 100,000 people playing
every week, posting in a postal order for 3/6 to participate.
Irish fans of Radio Luxembourg’s
show included Katherine Hickey from Waterford, James Byrne in Camolin, Patrick
Corless in Clare, Maura Delaney in Ardee and Robert Thornton in County Leitrim.
But despite the popularity of Radio Caroline and Luxembourg, troubled waters
lay ahead for the Irish listeners.
In March 1964, James Byrne posted
an envelope to Durham containing a 3/6 postal order to take part in the
airwaves game but his letter was intercepted by the Irish postal authorities in
Dublin Castle, opened and he then received the dreaded knock to his front door.
The Gardai were there. He failed to realize that under Section 34 of the Gaming
and Lotteries Act 1956, ‘It is illegal to send money to a lottery outside the
jurisdiction’.
The visit of the Garda meant a
trip to court where the Judge took into account that he did not know it was
illegal to send money abroad to participate in lotteries such as ‘Bingo’. Byrne
was given the probation act but in a strange piece of Irish legislation, the
State were not allowed to hold onto the evidence and the postal order was
retuned to Mr. Byrne. In April 1964 Patrick Corless from Ruan, Co. Clare another
listener to Radio Luxembourg told the court that he could win up to £ 8,500 on
a full house. There were postal bingo games in Ireland but the prize fund was
little more than a couple of hundred pounds and not the thousands that could be
won on radio bingo. Patrick Corless too ended up in court in Ennis and was
handed the Probation Act.
In August 1964 Katherine
Hickey from Waterford had her 3/6 postal order intercepted by the Post Office which
was being sent to Durham Postal Bingo Listening to Radio Luxembourg. In Court
the judge gave her the Probation Act at Dungarvan Court and sentenced to listen
to Radio Eireann. Maura Delaney from Ardee was the recipient of the Probation Act
from Justice Rochford in December 1964
On February 20th 1965,
Mrs Kathleen Durnin from Dunleer who had also been caught posting a 3/6 postal
order to Durham Postal Bingo told the court that,
‘It
was the result of listening to a commercial on Radio Caroline’
She too had the Probation Act applied
and had her postal order returned
It was not just the East coast
listeners that were listening and attempting to participate, in April 1965
Robert Thornton from Dromod appeared at Rooskey Court before Mr Justice PJ
Loftus. Once again, the probation act was applied and his two Postal orders
returned.
But it was not just in the
Irish courts that radio bingo games were about to suffer setbacks. In June 1965
the British House of Lords ruled that under the 1934 Betting Act, the Durham
Postal Bingo contravened that act. According to the University of
Kent’s Bingo Report the House of Lords,
‘Upheld the conviction
of the proprietor of a postal bingo club for running an illegal lottery, on the
grounds that buying a ticket in this form of bingo was not participation in a
game. The postal bingo involved 300,000 players. Results were announced in a
dedicated bingo programme on the pirate radio station Radio Luxembourg and
published in the cult magazine Tit Bits. Again winners were contacted and
notified without having to claim; again the court held that there was no
gaming, since there was no participation in a game and no assembly of players.’
Despite that setback and the disappearance from
Luxembourg’s schedule offshore pirate Radio Scotland revived the game with significantly
lower prize money.
In the early morning hours of December 17th 1964, Dutch armed police
boarded three military naval helicopters at Valkenburg airbase north of Den
Haag and headed off out into the North Sea. As the three flew in formation, a
naval ship, the ‘Delftshaven’ was already on route from the mainland to
rendezvous with the airborne assault. At 8.55am, the ship was anchored two
hundred yards from its target, five minutes later the three helicopters reached
their target, hovering briefly. The door swung open admitting a strong gust.
The first of the armed men abseiled down onto the deck below. Two men now
secured the helipad and the other helicopters moved in to offload their forces
onto the platform. Once secure, the naval vessel moved in and more armed
military boarded together with representatives of the judiciary. The operation
was swift and flawless and within thirty minutes, the Dutch authorities were in
full control of the REM Island.
In the offices Department of Industry and Commerce on Kildare Street,
Dublin, the Minister, Cork born Jack Lynch contemplated writing to his
colleague at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, Michael Hyland. He wanted
to suggest to his cabinet colleague, the awarding of a temporary license for
broadcast transmitting equipment be awarded to Verolme shipyard in Cork, to
avoid them breaking the 1926 Wireless Telegraphy Act. No citizen or
organisation had been granted such a license since the foundation of the State
and the creation of Radio Telifis Eireann, the State broadcaster. This was a
delicate matter, with hundreds of thousands of pounds of State aid to the
shipyard, a major employer in Cork, on the line. To compound matters, massive
press publicity and questions in Parliament would cause the Minister to feel
the heat.
If you want to support my work in preserving and presenting the history of Irish radio and archive as much broadcasting history as I can, then for the price of a cup of coffee (takeaway these days) you can financially support the work at - https://ko-fi.com/irishbroadcastinghistory
As these events unfolded across Europe, in Cork, Felix Muroz, a native
of Corunna, Northern Spain was still recovering from the injuries he received
on May 16th at the Verolme dockyard. His cries of ‘Mio Dios’ (My God) were
immediately answered by Cobh Catholic priest St. John Thornhill[1],
who offered spiritual and physical comfort to the injured man as he lay on the
docks waiting for an ambulance to take him to St. Finbarr’s hospital. With the
cries of the Spanish born crew member of the Global Adventurer still ringing in
their ears, the workers at Verolme Dockyard at Rushbrooke, on June first were
happy to see ‘the thing’ depart from their shores heading out into the Atlantic
and onwards towards the North Sea.
‘The Thing’ was the nickname given by the workers to a secret project
undertaken by the Verolme Dockyard. The dockyard had been purchased by Dutch
shipbuilder Cornelius Verolme in 1959 and had won contracts around the world to
build fleets of vessels including Irish naval vessels. Work on creating the
dockyard was begun by Joseph Wheeler in 1854 and it was officially opened in
1860. After changing ownership numerous times, with the outbreak of the Second
World War in 1939 it passed into the hands of the State shipping company Irish
Shipping Limited. It was reasonably successful and so it attracted investors
and as Ireland began to industrialize, International investment was encouraged
with financial incentives. In 1959 Cornelis Verolme bought the shipyard. Ship
building stopped in 1984, but repairs continued for some years after.
So how did a Dutch shipbuilder create this pirate television sensation
in 1964, just two years after the launch of an Irish TV channel on December
31st 1961 with the launch of RTE Television? Cornelis
Verolme sets up his first company ‘Scheepsinstallatiebedrijf Nederland N.V.’ in
1946 and subsequently took over two shipyards, one in Alblasserdam in 1950 and
another in Heusden in 1953. The demand for ever-larger ships led Verolme to
decide to start operating in this segment too. That called for a new yard,
preferably in deep water, close to the sea. In 1956 Cornelis Verolme started
the construction of the yard on the New Waterway in Rotterdam. Expanding to
Ireland in 1959 and later to places like Brazil
Cornelis Verolme
In an era when Ireland was emerging under the leadership of Sean Lemass
and his Fianna Fail government from its insular agricultural based economy into
a diverse manufacturing, exporting economy, Verolme was a major employer and
leader in Ireland’s drive to attract foreign investment. In order to give it an
advantage when competing for contracts from places like Poland and Liberia, the
Irish Government provided grants to the company to allow it to compete on a
financial front with shipbuilders in the UK. In June the company received
£350,000 in subsidies to keep it competitive. For the relevant Minister, Jack
Lynch [2]it
was an important employer in his native City and it was providing a step on the
ladder to the top job as Taoiseach, which he ascended to in 1966. According to
Dermot Keogh in his biography ‘Jack Lynch, A Biography’
‘Lynch took a mild view of what were deemed
‘technical offences’ committed in Ireland by Verolme. The Department of Posts
and Telegraphs complained in 1964 that Verolme was reporting to be providing
offshore platforms for pirate radio and television operations. Enquiries
established that the Secretary of Verolme Cork Dockyard Limited has confirmed
that the company was making drilling rigs. Multi-purpose equipment of that kind
could be used for anything, Verolme had no knowledge of intentions to use the
product for pirate television. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs proposed
to take action against the company over the alleged possession of an illegal
wireless transmitting apparatus imported by Verolme and intended for use in a
floating platform that would constitute a pirate television station.’
Lynch’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce took the view that,
‘even if there has been a technical offence,
it does not appear that punitive action by the Post Office would be warranted,
having regard that the apparatus would not be used in this country.’
The Department of Posts and Telegraphs in a memorandum to Government
said,
‘The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has
been informed that the offshore structure being built at Rushbrooke is now
almost complete and that is it not intended to install transmitting equipment
on it while it is this country. No particular action is therefore proposed in
this case’.
The Government were fully aware of the intention of the platform to house
an illegal broadcasting station but decided to turn a blind eye to it as it did
not affect Irish broadcasting and there seemed to be no intention to broadcast
to or from Ireland. Very little consideration was given to the wishes of the Government
in the Netherlands.
Verolme pictured with Taoiseach Sean Lemass at the Cork Dockyard
Verolme workers were seemingly unaware of intentions to use the platform
for pirate television when the build began in early 1964. The staff were also
kept in the dark as to what they were building, which would resemble an oil rig
platform, hence their description of the platform as ‘the thing’. What was ‘the
thing’?
‘The Thing’ would resemble an oil drilling rig but it would be far from
oil it intended to mine. Its financial viability would depend on advertising
revenue. Once moored, it would act as an offshore artificial island. The island
contained living quarters, a canteen, a fuel storage area and a helicopter
deck. In total it measured 80 ft by 40 ft., fitted with a 250-ft
transmission tower. The accommodation would have room for thirteen men and two
women who would be on board to man both the radio and television stations. The
newspapers reported that the building and transporting of the island would cost
the investors a quarter of a million pounds. The structure had four periscope
legs have been driven into the seabed filled with concrete. The location was
outside Holland’s three-mile territory limit and therefore in International
waters and exempt from Holland’s broadcastings laws.
The original idea of broadcasting from an artificial platform belonged
to one Will Hordijk from The Hague. In 1963 he teamed up with Cornelis Verolme,
who owned the Cork shipyard, and Pieter Heerema, a shipping entrepreneur from
Scheveningen who saw the construction of a TV island as useful practice for his
real work: the building of oil platforms, from which he was later to make his
fortune. Financing was provided by banking house Texeira de Mattos. The name
REM stood for Reclame Exploitatie Maatschappij (Advertising Exploitation
Company).
The group behind the plan wanted to expose the staid Dutch television
landscape that was controlled by the State and devoid of advertising, similar
to the BBC today. An R.C.A. transmitter was purchased in the United States and
shipped initially to Ireland which would have a radius of about 50 miles, an area
which includes roughly a third and most prosperous part of Holland's 12 million
population, including Amsterdam, Den Haag and the Hague.
The group behind the venture were a diverse group of planners and
businessmen that ranged from a former SS Nazi officer to a Jewish banking
institution, a ship builder regarded as a ‘bluffer’ and a later to be jailed
financier. The main backer for the project was Cornelius Verolme and it would
be his involvement with Cork and the Irish Government that would pave the way
for the illegal broadcaster to challenge the resolve of the Dutch Government.
The Irish Government were turning a blind eye to pirate operators, as
long as they were intended to broadcast in other jurisdictions. On St Patrick's
Day, the Irish Independent carried a story under the heading ‘Irishmen make
television island for Dutch pirates’. After a veil of secrecy had been drawn
over the building work, a spokesman at the Dockyard was now able to say ‘that
the dockyard were satisfied that the steel structure was for a marine TV
station. The dockyard was recycling some of the grant aid from the Irish
Government to build the pirate television platform. This was also at a time
when Ireland had launched their bid to join the European union and their laissez-faire
attitude to the illegal operations did not go unnoticed on the Continent. On May 19th, the Connacht Sentinel raised
many of questions that were bubbling under the surface. Their correspondent
wrote,
‘It might be worth a question, or two, in the
Dail, as to where the money for this construction originated. Was there any
Irish subsidy involved by accident or design in the project?’
One could imagine how angry our Government
would be if a pirate television or radio ship were to perch at
the Kish and proceed to outdo Radio and Telifis Eireann.’
The news that ‘a pirate television platform’ was being built in Cork was
front page news, this despite the workers not being told exactly what they were
building and nicknaming it ‘The Thing’. The building of this platform was a
departure from traditional shipbuilding that had been the mainstay of the
business in Cork. The story of its build and subsequent departure generated
many column inches, even at one stage, Verolme telling spectators where the
best vantage points were around the harbour to watch the platforms departure.
‘Dockyard officials stressed today that the
best view of the island will be gained from the Monkstown shore and that it
will be difficult to see anything from the Rushbrooke side. They also said that
it would not be anything dramatic as say the launching of a ship. It will be
rather like lifting a box of wooden crates onto a lorry said a spokesman.’[3]
Lynch seemed to maintain later that the Irish Government, including his
Department had no idea that the platform being built at Verolme was to be used
as a site for an illegal broadcasting station. Unfortunately for Lynch and
Lemass’s Government, Ireland was gaining a track record in the field of
providing facilities for the creation of pirate operations that would target
Britain and the greater European community, this coming at a time when the
campaign for Ireland to join the European Economic Community was gathering
pace. In March 1964, Radio Caroline and Radio Atlantis were both fitted out as
off shore pirate radio stations in the County Louth port of Greenore near the
Northern Ireland border. Greenore was a privately operated port owned by
Caroline founder Ronan O’Rahilly’s father. The Verolme dockyard was by 1964 in
receipt of hundreds of thousands of pounds in grant money from the Irish
Government. This ‘free’ money no doubt gave the shipyard an opportunity to
pursue diverse projects. The grants however by mid 1964 were causing unease for
the Government as it emerged that there seemed to be a game of ‘find the pea’
with some of the grants provided to the company.
Mr. James Dillon, the Fine Gael leader of the opposition said he had
seen in the Press that the dockyard " in the face of intense and fierce
competition," had secured a contract to build a 30,000-ton ship. The order
was placed by the Netherlands Freight and Tanker Co., Ltd., of The Hague, and
the chairman of that company was Mr. Verolme. We can all picture the pretty
picture of Mr. Verolme pleading and wrestling with himself to decide on placing
this contract. "About three weeks before this vessel was completed the
Minister for Industry and Commerce, Jack Lynch announced that he proposed to
give Mr. Verolme a subsidy of £350.000 to enable Mr. Verolme to meet the
contract price on foot of the agreement. which had been made between Mr.
Verolme and himself." Then a remarkable development took place. said Mr.
Dillon. The ship was sold to a firm in Amsterdam. "It has been assumed
that it was not less than one million pounds sterling.' Another ship was now in
hands, for which he understood they were to provide another £350.000 subsidy.
This time the ship was being built for the Liberian National Shipping Line, of
which Mr. Verolme owned 25 pc of the capital. (Belfast Telegraph June 17th
1964)
In response to the allegations made in the Dail against the Dutch
shipbuilding company were rejected as "only partially true and a complete
misrepresentation of the facts" by Verolme Vice-President, Dr.
Henrik J. Hofstra, a former Netherlands Finance Minister. According to a debate
in the Dail in May 1964, the previous year Verolme had been granted free aid of
£900,000[4].
In November 1963 future Irish Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald wrote in the
Irish Farmers Journal,
‘the Verolme shipyard was launched
at Cobh the Taoiseach told the Dail that Mr. Verolme was prepared to
invest £5-6 million himself, and only required an assurance that if there were
difficulties about the export of capital from Holland, it could be made
available from Irish sources. For four years after that, the Government refused
to disclose how much Mr Verolme had in fact invested in this project
until in July they came to the Dail to say that Mr. Verolme had
invested £687,000 in the project, that the Industrial Credit Co. had lent
almost three time this figure, £1,825,000 and that the Government had given a
grant of £550,000 of which £400,000 was to be used to pay back part of the
Industrial Credit loan, (a very dubious use of the Industrial Grants Act
machinery).
But despite the manner in which the Irish Government had financed Mr.
Verolme's project, the shipyard was losing money at such a rate that it could
be kept going, said the Minister for Industry and Commerce, only if the Dail
provided a subsidy of £1,220,000 to help the company to recoup its running
costs, a procedure which has not previously been employed to help any Irish
company that got into difficulties.’
Writing in 1995 in Trouw.nl, Willem Breedveld wrote,
‘The Dutch Berlusconi’s wanted to seize the
power of TV in the Netherlands in 1964. Shipbuilder and bluffer Cornelis
Verolme, the obscure financier J.H. Fehmers (who later was jailed for
malpractice) and former bunker builder PS Heerema opened a commercial TV
station with the heartfelt support of the Telegraaf, which successfully started
its broadcasts from an oil rig in front of the coast at Zandvoort. The
vast majority of the people thought it was beautiful and even turned out to be
willing to buy REM shares, which later turned out to be worth nothing.’
On the front page of the Cork Examiner on Thursday May 14th under the
headline ‘The Most unusual Ship Will Take Away TV Island’, they reported on the
Global Adventurer’s departure from Rotterdam,
‘M.V. Global Adventurer ,
mounting the biggest floating crane in the world, left Rotterdam at 4
p.m. on Tuesday, bound for Cork, according to a message from Amsterdam
yesterday’
Building the infrastructure in Cork was one part of the equation,
transporting it to the North Sea was another. To achieve that goal Pieter
Heerema's Global Adventurer vessel, the first ship in the world to be converted
into a crane vessel with a lifting capacity of 300 tons arrived in Cork,
creating a mini sensation. Originally a Norwegian oil tanker the Sunnaas, it
was converted at the Verolme dockyard in Rotterdam to assist in the oil rig
deployment industry. On May 14th, the
Global Adventurer arrived in Cork and it made front page news in the Cork
newspapers including the Evening Echo. It was positioned by the quayside near
the dry dock and loading of ‘the thing’ began. On Saturday morning as part of
the living quarters was being loaded on board, the crane creaked and cracked
and broke as it lifted a 160 ton section on board.[5]
It crashed to the deck of the ship injuring Munoz, a married man with two
children. Because of the news worthiness of both the plan to broadcast and the
originality of the Global Adventurer being in harbour, the press photographers
were there to capture the events as they unfolded, including a photograph of
Father Thornhill tending to Munoz as they awaited the ambulance. His main
injuries were to his back and suffering from shock. The front page of the Evening
Echo told their readers ‘Dockyard Scenes of Chaos as ‘The Thing’ Crashes Down
On Ship’.
The Evening Echo had a reporter quayside and he delivered an eye-witness
account. The paper reported,
‘An "Evening Echo" reporter
was ten yards from 'where'the
top of the giant crane, the largest floating crane in the
world with a maximum lift of nearly 300 tons, sliced into the wharf
on the port side of the Global Adventurer.
This is his eye-witness's account: '" l
hope I may never nave to relieve the seconds of panic as I ran frantically from
the crushing weight of the huge upper portion of the broken jib of the crane,
the lashing cables and the flying metal.
"Some ten yards from where I had been
sitting, watching an interesting but routine lift of the superstructure of the
TV island, was a gaping hole.
" The head of the crane had driven in
several feet into the wharf on. the port side of the ship, slicing through a
steel plate as though it was tissue paper." Minutes before the crash, an
" Evening Echo " photographer and a TV cameraman had climbed on deck.
The loading superintendent, Mr. Jenkins, was
directing operations on a telephone system, while crew members waited to guide
" The Thing" into its cradle.
" It was poised some fifteen feet above
the steel members of the cradle. Then suddenly there was a grinding noise as
the crane snapped, a sickening crash as the 160-ton upper structure of the TV.
Island crunched into the ship just fore of midships. Then pandemonium.
"Deckhands scampered to avoid the
falling debris, and I saw the TV. cameraman running frantically aft. All this
happened in a split second. I remained frozen in horror.
"Then I was running, jumping over
obstacles, and as I ran, I could hear the screams of an injured seaman.
"It seemed unbelievable that nobody had
died, and that when the seaman was taken ashore, he could raise his thumb in
weak greeting to me."
The Evening Echo provided a running commentary on their front pages for
days. They reported on the Global Adventurer’s arrival in Cork before it had
berthed quayside that,
‘An "Echo" reporter also learned from Amsterdam this morning
that the Dutch people are taking an intense interest in the events in Cork
Harbour, and keenly awaiting news of the departure of "The Thing" for
the waters off their shores.’
The following day the Echo reported
‘The clang that rang out in the dockyard when
‘The Thing’ fell on the deck of the Global Adventurer in Cork Harbour today
will have international echoing. Since it became known that the platform under
construction at Rushbrooke was for a Dutch pirate TV station, the eyes of the
world, particularly the querying eyes of television were on the situation.’
Cork and especially the Echo, seemed to be at the forefront of the great
pirate debate that was now unfolding across Europe. It should be remembered
that Ireland was already making headlines in the offshore pirate world when
earlier that year two ships were fitted out in Greenore port in County Louth
including the famous Radio Caroline.
The ship left Cork on the Sunday with part of the platform and a broken
crane departed Cork and headed firstly to Southampton to unload the partial
construction on board and then travelled across the North Sea to Rotterdam to
the Verolme Shipyard to have the crane repaired. Once repaired it returned to
Cork, greeted by large crowds and an excited Irish press corps.
The accident had been a serious setback for the operation. Mr. A.
Hareeme, manager of the Global Offshore Construction Co., the firm engaged to
erect the station off the Dutch coast, arrived at Cork Airport by charter plane
to inspect the damage.
Every step of the Global Adventurer journey was reported in the press.
It had arrived in Southampton[6],
it arrived in Rotterdam[7],
It has left Rotterdam[8],
it arrives in Cork tomorrow[9]
and then on Monday June 1st, having worked into the small hours of the morning,
the ship with its cargo on board slipped away from the dock but as it moved
into the harbour heading out to sea, it anchored as a weather front moved in
and it was deemed unsafe with its precious cargo on board to continue its
journey. The Examiner deeming that the jinx had struck again. The next day the
ship began its journey to the North Sea. While moored in Cork, some of the crew
visited their colleague in St. Finbarr’s Hospital, checking on his welfare and
delivering presents from family and friends. The vessel and its crew also found
itself stuck in the middle of lightening unofficial strikes which affected the
local tugs and pilots in the harbour. It was one of the few ships to get away
from the port that day.
Within two days, the ship was off the Dutch coast and construction began
on the artificial island. The legs were lowered into the sea and filled with
concrete anchoring it to the seabed eleven miles off the coast. With the legs
in place, the platform was completed by June 5th and over the next couple of
weeks, the radio and television transmitters were installed, the aerial
erected, studios built and it was ready to test.
On May 26th 1964, the Irish Press had reported,
‘The company setting up the station, R.E.M.,
has given some details of the type of programme to be transmitted. Four British
Incorporated TV serials have been booked, Robin Hood, William Tell, The Saint
and The Invisible Man. British, U.S. and continental films will also be shown.
A spokesman for R.E.M. claimed that the
available advertising time had been fully booked from September 1, when the
service is due to start, until the end of January, 1965.’
Meanwhile on the same day May 26th, the building of the
platform for an illegal broadcasting operation was becoming a political issue
in Ireland with questions were directed at the Minister Lynch in the Irish
parliament, Dail Eireann. Mr Sweetman TD asked the Minister in a debate of the
‘Construction of Pirate TV Station whether any subsidy was paid or payable,
directly or indirectly for the pirate TV station constructed in Cork. Lynch’s
curt reply was,
‘If the deputy’s question relates to the
offshore structure recently completed by the Verolme Cork Dockyard Limited, the
answer is in the negative.’
On 29 July 1964, the first radio test transmission was made from REM
Island on 1400 kHz mediumwave. The transmitter power was 15 kW. This was
followed by the start of TV tests on 13 August, and the official opening of TV
Noordzee on 1 September. Special antennas had to be purchased to receive the
broadcasts on VHF Channel 11, but the Dutch public were very enthusiastic, and
by October 1964 audience surveys showed that TV Noordzee had 2 million viewers
every night. The TV and radio broadcasts were not made concurrently. Radio
Noordzee operated between 9am and 6.15 pm, and 15 minutes later the TV station
signed on.
From the Dutch Newspaper Archives
The Dutch authorities moved quickly to put a stop to the broadcasts from
the Irish built platform. They had up until now tolerated the radio broadcasts
from the offshore ship housing Radio Veronica but broadcasting commercial
television would not be tolerated. Using European laws, they rushed legislation
through the Dutch parliament that rather than outlawing the broadcasts from the
REM, they increased the territorial claim on continental shelf at the bottom of
the ocean to include the area where the legs of the platform were concreted
down. This technically made the broadcasts inside Dutch territory and therefore
illegal. To counteract the authorities moves, the operators announced that its
TV operations had been sold to a British company, High Seas Television. One
Eric Bent from Weybridge, Surrey was named as the new owner, having paid just
£100 for their purchase. TV Noordzee made its last transmission on 14 December
1964. Ownership of REM Island itself was transferred to a Panamanian company in
the hope that this would raise international issues if the authorities attempted to seize the
platform. Radio Noordzee meanwhile continued broadcasting on board, but on the
morning of 17th December 1964, it was all about to change.
There was increased activity seen around the platform early on the
morning of the seventeenth. Over the previous couple of days, there had been an
increase in the number of Dutch military aircraft overflies spying on the structure.
Just before eight a.m., a flotilla of ships began to circle the base of the
platform. At eight, three helicopters arrived over the horizon. The first
helicopter moved in over the platform and dropped a smoke bomb onto the helipad
area and as that aircraft moved off another swept in and Marine Captain Eric
Gerritsen was the first to be winched down onto the platform, followed by more
marines. Once the upper deck was secured and there was no opposition from the
crew on board, a basket was lowered to the awaiting ships and more military
forces were winched on board. The basket had been used by the crew to ferry up
men, food, TV programmes cassettes and records but now they were being used to
commandeer the platform. The crew of ten were ordered to switch off the
transmitters, silencing Radio Noordzee in the middle of programme presented by
Sonja van Proosdjijk and a record by 21 year old Anneke Gronloh titled
‘Paradiso’.
TV and Radio Noordzee had been silenced for good by the Dutch military
on behalf of the Dutch Government. So, what happened to the platform built by
the men at the Verolme dockyard in Cork harbour? In 1974, the Department of
Public Works began using REM Island as a base for carrying out marine
investigations and measurements. However, in October 2003 the authorities
decided it is surplus to requirements, and a spokesman said that it has come to
the end of its life and will be dismantled. The removal of equipment from the
platform will begin in early 2004. It was later broken up and the platform and
accommodation dock was anchored in Amsterdam harbour and opened as a
restaurant.
%20(1).png)
.jpg)
%20(1).png){kind=link}