'Prince Roy of Sealand' Roy Bates Dead at 91. Sealand. Wired 8.07: Welcome to Sealand. Now Bugger Off. Welcome to Sealand.
Now Bugger Off. Hunkered down on a North Sea fortress, a crew of armed cypherpunks, amped-up networking geeks, and libertarian swashbucklers is seceding from the world to pursue a revolutionary idea: an offshore, fat-pipe data haven that answers to nobody. By Simson Garfinkel Ryan Lackey, a 21-year-old MIT dropout and self-taught crypto expert, sees fantastic things for himself in 2005. For starters, he'll be filthy rich. Before you get too choked up, you should know that Lackey means giving corporations and frisky individuals the "freedom" to store and move data without answering to anybody, including competitors, regulators, and lawyers. This summer, with $1 million in seed money provided by a small core of Internet-fattened investors, Lackey and his colleagues are setting up Sealand as the world's first truly offshore, almost-anything-goes electronic data haven - a place that occupies a tantalizing gray zone between what's legal and what's ... possible.
Meaning? The History of Sealand. The Principality of Sealand is a unique little micronation with a colorful history.
Located six miles off the eastern shores of Britain, it is one of four Maunsell Naval Sea Forts deployed by Britain during World War 2. It was originally called Roughs Tower, and was was used to monitor and report German minelaying in the waters off England. During the war, it was home to 150-300 personnel, radar equipment, two 6-inch guns, and two 40mm anti-aircraft autocannons. But after being abandoned by the Royal Navy in 1956, this artificial island on the high seas has been the site of a pirate radio landing pad, a takeover, a controversial declaration of independence, a coup, and it's own miniature war.
The structure Sealand is built upon is technically a very large sunken ship, due to the way it was deployed. Once Roughs Tower's wartime duties were done, and the Royal Navy had cleaned it out, it sat unoccupied for a number of years. Things were relatively calm for a time after that. Principality of Sealand - Original Site Archive. Fact File Picture Gallery Overview During the 1939-45 War, Great Britain established an artificial island on the High Seas. This island was equipped with radar and heavy armaments and occupied by some two hundred servicemen. The task of the island and its inhabitants was to guard the approaches to the Thames Estuary, where large and vulnerable convoys of shipping were assembled.
Some time after the cessation of hostilities, the island was derelicted and abandoned by the British Government. In the winter of 1966, a British family took possession and commenced the task of equipping and restoring the island. Their rights and claims of Sovereignty over the island and its territorial waters have been ratified time after time over the intervening years by National Courts and leading international Jurists. Over the years since the declaration of Statehood by Sealand, the family lived a free-frontier lifestyle. The elements and the sea had to be fought constantly with a relentless determination. The Principality of Sealand - Become a Baroness.