Caroline making an April fool of the UK broadcasting authorities

Ronan O'Rahilly

FIFTY years ago today senior government figures felt like complete April fools, hardly knowing which way to turn. Not only had a pirate radio station begun broadcasting to millions from off the English coast, another one was said to be on the way to join it. And over the same weekend we’d witnessed the first major clash of ‘mods and rockers’ at Clacton-on-Sea, pitched battles on the sea-front leading to extensive damage and scores of arrests.

However, there was love and peace out on the South Cutler sandbank a few miles off Felixstowe, where Radio Caroline happily broadcast another 12-hours of continuous pop music for a fourth day, proving their arrival had been no Bank Holiday gimmick.

Emergency talks were underway in Whitehall over which laws were being broken and how this monstrous development in the North Sea could be quashed. The panic of the men in suits gathered momentum as rumours spread that another station – Radio Atlanta – was to start from a second ship any day now.

What was not generally known was that the Caroline and Atlanta projects were deadly rivals, their leaders going it alone after originally working together on the idea of pop music from the high seas. Both were desperate to be first to broadcast to the youth of Britain from a ship in international waters and would sell on-air advertising to pay for it.

Irishman Ronan O’Rahilly won the initial race to get his boat secretly fitted out and in position to broadcast. To do so, he had to use his Irish gift of the gab, fending off enquiries in the Port of Greenore about what was going on. Despite the 160-foot aerial mast they were erecting, he was able to spin yarns to locals about using the 700-ton boat to transport cattle and to collect sponges from the sea bed.

Mischief was suspected, but nobody knew for sure until Easter weekend 1964 when it call came together. Millions of listeners from London, the Home Counties and further afield tuned in while O’Rahilly and his pals on land set about finding backers with the cash to keep the station on air.

Convincing his bank to advance him enough for a smart suit, O’Rahilly visited the likes of Jocelyn Stevens, proprietor of Queen magazine, and talked them into supporting Caroline. O’Rahilly was barely 24 but looked older and was very persuasive: “If they think you have money in England, then that’s as good as having it,” he said.

Once he’d blagged enough funds to get the station on air for a few weeks, things began falling into place. Its appeal was instantaneous and massive. “I never had any doubts over whether it would appeal to a big audience. That was the least of our worries,” he said. Within 48 hours of the first chart-topper being played (Not Fade Away) letters from avid listeners flooded into Caroline’s London office and its agent at Harwich.

Operating on a shoestring with novices doing most jobs, O’Rahilly knew he’d need at least one expert – a ship’s captain. The man given this job was Captain George E Mackay, a 50-year-old salty sea dog from Lancashire who carried out his duties in a smart uniform and red carpet slippers.

A reporter from the East Anglian Daily Times managed to get on board in the first few days and interviewed Mackay. Sipping a hot toddy and enjoying the garlic sausage and cheese rolls baked on board that day, Mackay pronounced: “There’s nothing rash or foolhardy about this venture. Everything is well founded.”

The reporter caught the pioneering atmosphere of it all: “This is simply a shipload of jolly young pirates, trying to make people happy, while the Establishment mutter oaths under their breath.”