Sealand

A fort in international waters

Roughs Tower was built in 1942, one of a series of sea forts meant to defend Britain from German bombers: two concrete towers topped by a steel deck about 33.5 metres above the sea, manned at the height of the war by up to 300 men. Most of the forts stood inside Britain’s territorial waters, which then ran 3 nautical miles from shore; Roughs, at 6.5, was one of the few outside them. The navy abandoned it by 1956.^[1]

A principality from pirate radio

In the 1960s the BBC controlled Britain’s airwaves and played pop music only late at night, and pirate stations broadcast from offshore. Roy Bates, a former army major, was evicted from another fort closer to shore, so he occupied Roughs Tower on Christmas Eve 1966. On 2 September 1967 he declared it the Principality of Sealand, calling it terra nullius, and made himself and his wife, Joan, prince and princess.^[1]

In 1968 his son Michael fired what he said were warning shots at a crew servicing a nearby buoy. A British court ruled it could not judge him, because the incident had happened outside British territory; Sealand reads that ruling as de facto recognition. A constitution followed in 1975, with a currency, passports, stamps, an anthem, a flag and a coat of arms.^[1]

“E Mare Libertas”^[1]

The coup of 1978

A German businessman, Alexander Achenbach, whom Roy Bates had made foreign minister, fell out with the family and in 1978 hired Dutch and German mercenaries who seized the platform, held Michael captive and sent him off on a trawler to the Netherlands. The Bateses retook it by helicopter and held one German prisoner until a West German diplomat negotiated his release, which Sealand also took as recognition.^[1]

A court in Cologne had already ruled that the fort had too little community life and living space to count as a country.^[1]

Inside British waters

On 1 October 1987 the United Kingdom extended its territorial waters to 12 nautical miles, which put Sealand inside them; the day before, Roy Bates had extended Sealand’s own waters to 12 miles too. Britain has not tried to take it over.^[1] Roy Bates died in 2012 and Michael succeeded him, living on the mainland while a caretaker guards the platform. Sealand earns money from selling noble titles and merchandise.^[1]