Friday 26 February 2016

Scalded by coffee, mashed fingers and a mystery virus

OFFSHORE life with the pop pirates 50 years ago could be a dangerous business. The month of February 1966 presented all sorts of hazards for brave DJs and engineers stuck out at sea.  

With the Radio Caroline South ship ‘Mi Amigo’ having recently drifted onto an Essex beach with near-catastrophic consequences, a new temporary home had been arranged thanks to the loan of Swedish Radio Sud vessel ‘Cheetah II’.

The sister ship housing Caroline North, meanwhile, continued to broadcast despite  atrocious weather off England’s NW coastline. During one particularly nasty storm, a gigantic wave smashed the ship so hard that Dutch crewman J.Burgering threw coffee over himself, badly scalding his neck. He was taken off the ship for treatment at Ramsey Cottage Hospital on the Isle of Man.

In a separate incident, Caroline North had to make use of a lifeboat for the first time since broadcasting had begun at sea nearly two years earlier. The victim was Austrian-born chief engineer Manfred Sommer, an extrovert character who would occasionally give visitors tours of the ship while in a state of recent refreshment. 
 

* Engineer Manfred Sommer, damaged fingers  and all, compiled
 a scrapbook of his time on Caroline (pic: offshoreradio.co.uk)
One version of the story tells how Manfred took a young touring party to the engine room and announced “This is the cooling fan” before sticking his hand through the grill. He then quickly withdrew it to reveal a bloodied, tangled mess in the finger area. Onlookers nearly fainted with shock, but Manfred, perhaps anaesthetised by alcohol, was initially undaunted and when the ship’s captain was summoned, he promptly repeated his actions to demonstrate what had happened.

Before he could do any more damage, a tourniquet was applied to stem the flow of blood. Manfred had clearly gone a bit too far this time and his recovery was severely hampered by the shocking weather which meant a lifeboat didn’t arrive for him for another 48 hours. As the effects of the alcohol wore off and delayed shock set in, ashen-faced Manfred’s condition slowly worsened and his weight decreased alarmingly. The lifeboat whisked him to terra firma and he subsequently spent nine months recovering before declaring himself fit for action again.
 
Manfred wasn’t the only eccentric associated with pirate radio news this month. In deepest Cambridgeshire, 53-year-old Leonard Warren announced that he had become Overlord of the Ancient Kingdom of Reach, village of 270 people on the edge of the Fens, and publicly invited Caroline boss Ronan O’Rahilly to set up a radio transmitter within the ‘safe’ borders of his kingdom. Warren explained that Reach qualified as an independent state because in 1201 King John had granted it a Rogation Day Charter which “secured its boundaries for eternity.” He said he was in possession of authentic documents which backed this up. O’Rahilly was said to be interested in the idea, although admitted he felt a little sceptical about Mr Warren’s claims about the village’s status!

Meanwhile, broadcasting got underway in February 1966 - albeit with interruptions - from the ‘Cheetah II’, thus keeping the many thousands of Caroline South fans happy. But on the same day the station returned to the airwaves on reduced power, an emergency call had to be put in to North Foreland radio, when Aussie disc jockey Graham Webb was found in a state of near collapse. He was taken off the ship to Myland Hospital in Colchester, suffering from what was described as a mystery virus. 

Further north the Dunbar lifeboat was called out to rescue Radio Scotland’s Dick Harvey, reportedly in agony with stomach pains.

There was no let-up in the action around this time, with news emerging that former Dutch fishing vessel ‘Ocean VII’ had arrived in Scarborough to be fitted out as a home for Radio 270. The authorities were struggling to keep pace with the monitoring all of this activity, and when asked what they were going to do about Radio City and Radio 390 – occupying abandoned war-time forts in the Thames estuary - the MoD could only meekly admit that turfing them off was “Not a viable project at the moment.”

 
* The weather outside's appalling, but the show goes on
thanks to DJ 'Daffy' Don Allen on Caroline North.
Episodes like the above in early 1966 made good copy for the newspapers, as did the announcement that showbiz entrepreneur Philip Solomon had joined the board and purchased a 20% stake in Planet Productions, which now controlled the two Caroline stations. Solomon, a 41-year-old from Belfast, had already steered major acts like The Bachelors and Ruby Murray to stardom and when he stuck his finger in the Caroline pie it was seen as a significant day for pirate radio.




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