When more than one radio transmitter attempts to broadcast on the same frequency and within the same area, disruption occurs. This destroys the radio transmissions, rendering the content of both incomprehensible. For that reason, national governments have taken charge of regulating broadcast waves, granting licenses to some people and organizations and denying them to others. This is the practical side of radio licensing, but there is another side to it too: governments, wherever they claim to fall on the political spectrum, are always interested in restricting content. Restriction, of course, leads invariably to circumvention.
In 1964, the British government was not unique in its efforts to tightly control its radio waves. What was unique, however, was the national hold that the BBC was exerting on viewers’ ears, largely in partnership with major record labels like EMI and Decca. To release a record under one of these labels was to reach the people of Britain, and to do otherwise was to play tunes into a void somewhere. Ronan O’Rahilly, an Irishman working in the music industry, was learning this the hard way, running headlong into a wall trying to launch his musician Georgie Fame’s singles onto the BBC’s air.
In time, O’Rahilly read the writing on the wall. He realized the juggernaut forces, a conglomeration of government and business, that he was up against, and he set his sights out to the horizon. In February 1964, he purchased Fredericia, a Danish passenger ferry. He equipped the ship with radio equipment, and from the Port of Grenore in County Louth, he set off for the coast of Suffolk. There, Fredericia – rechristened Caroline– began 24-hour transmission. In international waters, she became a pop culture phenomenon, her broadcast audience growing rapidly throughout the UK, reaching seven-million listeners within the year.
Launched for business reasons, Radio Caroline became a symbol of free expression. O’Rahilly, for his part, had chosen the name “Caroline” because of a photo he had seen. In the photo, President Kennedy and his children John Jr. and Caroline were dancing in the Oval Office while their father looked on, a scene that O’Rahilly interpreted as a lighthearted jab at government oversight and that perfectly suited his vision for unregulated, international-waters radio. Although the primary goal was not to evade government, that was what happened: the rock music that the establishment had snubbed finally had a home.
Radio Caroline expanded from one ship to two, the original Caroline sank, and Ross Revenge became the capital ship in the fleet. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Radio Caroline faced ongoing legislative threats by the British government, and in 1989, the Dutch and British governments conducted joint raids on houses and businesses they suspected of harboring equipment for the pirate radio station. Through it all, the broadcasts continued to travel from the sea into people’s homes and offices, freely crossing the boundaries between the British shore and the Atlantic Ocean.
It was only in 1991 that Ross Revenge lost her anchor and needed to return to shore. After 27 years, the uninterrupted broadcasts had come to a halt. Fans managed to preserve Ross Revenge, and the Radio Caroline brand persisted, earning a license in 1999. The era had ended, but its change was undeniable: in response to Radio Caroline’s massive audiences, BBC Radio spun off into multiple stations, offering a greater variety of music. While the BBC had distributed content within narrow limits, collaborating with a select few musicians and producers, audiences wanted something more, and Radio Caroline gave it to them. Had Caroline never set up shop beyond the mainland’s borders, neither the BBC nor the audiences may have ever known just how narrow the content at the time was. In international waters, anchored off the coast of
Suffolk, Radio Caroline had lurched from restriction’s grasp and, accruing an audience equivalent to a third of the government-sponsored BBC, proven the power of audience demand.
Photos:
Top banner image and second inset image: "Imatges de l'interior del vaixell de Ràdio Caroline " by wikicommons user Laura Romero Valldecabres, cropped for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
Top inset image: "MV Caroline anchored off Isle of Man summer 1965" by wikipedia user DWSav cropped for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License