Sunday, 10 January 2016

LIGHTSHIP CORMORANT / LADY DIXON - Chapter 130c

Hi again David.
I have been out in the windy and icy raindrops falling on Falkirk and its environs, hence my absence with a quick response. Thanks for the confirmation of where the paper trail seems to end at the moment. I can see that we both have a vested interest in finding the true history of this vessel:
    I have just taken a look at your Chapter 36 - http://cormorantlightship.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lightship-cormorant-lady-dixon-chapter_6.html - about GBOK, and the most reliable source of information about the use of ships as broadcasting vessels to and anchored off the coast of the British Isles is Chris Edwards and his digest-sized magazine of longstanding called 'Offshore Echos' - http://www.offshoreechos.com/ and for information about people connected with offshore radio I would recommend for reliability and authenticity Jon Myer's 'Pirate Radio Hall of Fame' - http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/ I cannot make such claims about other sources of similar information.
    Both Chris and Jon are on a contributing email list which I am maintaining, and which is also sent to a number of other people who share similar interests in the same subject matter. Chris has personally investigated the records at Kew on many occasions, and he wants to know whether you have seen the Kew archives relating to GBOK and its sister project 'Voice of Slough'? We would be happy to share this information with you if it is of any assistance.
       Our interest is in ships and marine structures from the standpoint of offshore broadcasting. My specific line of research at the present moment is on the years from about 1959 to about 1969.
     We are wrestling with a somewhat large cast of characters about whom many myths and outright deceptions have been manufactured and retold by 'mainstream media'. This list includes Allan Crawford (Australian); John Thompson (British-Canadian), and Arnold Swanson (Canadian). Some of the technical data published at the time is semi-factual, much of the chronology of events is entirely bogus.
    There are several reasons why this story is so obfuscated, and some explanations can be listed as a need for secrecy; some criminal and some political. These events happened so long ago that it is difficult to establish the truth about them. In a later phase (1963) my own interest was seized upon when a friend in another country received a declassified CIA document that revealed a very complex geo-political involvement with the offshore stations that finally came on the air between 1964 and 1968 with broadcasts directed towards the United Kingdom. They might have been called 'pop' stations but their real background story is anything but fizz.
     Lady Dixon research has come about as a result of accepting nothing at face value and going back to the origins of this story in order to discover what really happened, and not what we were all led to believe.
     I realize that this is somewhat off your own twin tracks of interest in cars and ships, but perhaps there is enough of a common thread that we can assist each other in discovering the true pedigree of the Lady Dixon?

Mervyn

Hi Mervyn
Fascinating.  Thanks for that background and of course I would welcome any titbits related to Lady Dixon and any guidance to keep me away from untruths and Chinese whispers. I will follow up on Chris Edwards and Jon Myers and of course I will let you have anything I find on the 1960s era. If I had your e-mail address I could send you everything I have so far - for you to pick through.
I have been in contact with Kew, but not reference the ship post 1960.  I currently trying to establish contact with a researcher there who I met at a car meet. No response so far.
David 

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