Lots of tit-bits lately concerning the Cormorant’s, or as
she was by then, the Lady Dixon’s short-lived venture into pirate radio. These items come from Mervyn Hagger, Chris
Edwards and their colleagues, who are working very hard to unearth the true
story of the pirate radio era. Apparently much of what is commonly accepted as
the truth is actually far from it. The items include reports from local
newspapers and other publications. From
the WPN & Advertisers’ Review, 16 Feb 1962:-
NEW “PIRATE” RADIO
STATION PROMOTERS REVEAL THEIR PLANS
Radio Station GBOK
– located in international waters at the Nore in the Thames Estuary
– is to start 24-hour broadcasting to an area within a 150-mile radius of the
transmitter on February 28th.
The company is headed by 56-year-old
Canadian-born Arnold Swanson, who was originally technical adviser to “Voice of
Slough”, a similar radio station planned by 42-year-old John Thompson,
ex-journalist and Canadian broadcaster, He has now shelved his own plans to
concentrate with Mr Swanson on GBOK.
GBOK will be situated on a Pilot Station
and Lightship which will perform all the normal functions and duties of a
lightship to sea traffic.
That ‘Pilot
Station and Lightship’ was the Lady Dixon and, as we know, she never made it. I
do wonder how she was going to ‘perform
all the normal functions and duties of a lightship to sea traffic’ when her
main mast, lantern and all heavy equipment were due to be removed as part of
her preparation. Chris has sent me a photo from the National Archives of Lady
Dixon waiting at the dockside for that conversion, (Photo 1391) which is the
first photo I have come across of the ship between her working in Belfast Lough
in 1957 and that 1991 photo of her painted bright red at Sittingbourne. She
still has PILOT painted on her sides and sits low in the water, indicating that
not only is the lantern still there but all the heavy machinery and anchor
chains are down below. Thank you Chris (and the National Archives).
Just after
receiving that photo, I learned of a photo of the Lady Dixon, which was
published in the Times newspaper on 10th March 1962, just before she
got stuck in the Pitsea mud. It cost me £33 to buy a copy and it should be here
soon, but I will not be sharing it with you as they want another £75 to waive
the copyright. Strange that it should
cost anything to share a photograph of something you actually own!
George Clarke’s
Amazing Spaces team has contacted Simon to ask whether he wants his project to
appear on the program. Simon is already two years into the project and will
probably be still going in another two years, so it is likely to be too long a
timespan for television.
Finally, Simon has
been advised by an experienced ‘wet-blaster’ that he would be better off
getting a small team of labourers in for a week to strip the below-deck area by
hand, rather than any sort of blasting. He would have to take a week off from
his wallpapering business to supervise, but any lost revenue would probably be
off-set by the difference in costs between manual scraping and wet-blasting.
David
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