The fans' memorabilia

Radio Northsea International had a massive audience, covering a wide area with a powerful AM transmitter as well as utilising short wave. But they also had a one kilowatt FM transmitter which meant that those lucky listeners who lived on the coast, close to the ship's anchorage, could hear the output with much better quality audio.
 
One of those listeners was Nico Verbeek whose home was near Scheveningen in Holland. Fortunately for us, he had a tape recorder - a Uher Variocord 263 - and he used to record some of his favourite shows. Nico has very kindly shared these treasured recordings with The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. He says: “Now I wish I recorded more hours but, as you probably know, tapes were rather expensive then and I only wanted to do the recordings at 19cm/s speed in 2 track.”
 
So here is “the sound of a young Europe” as you may not have heard it before.

4th August 1971

Crispian St.John is hosting the 8-10pm show (UK time), with Mark Stuart on news duties. Duration 10 minutes 19 seconds. (Photo of Crispian from Steve England's photo album.)

5th August 1971

It is the following day. We hear Crispian doing the station ident, David Rogers reading the news, then Mark Stuart starting the 10pm to midnight show. Duration 10 minutes 32 seconds. (Photo of Mark from Paul May's photo album.)

8th April 1972

It is eight months later. There is no news service, just a weather forecast on the hour, and Brian McKenzie is on the air around 10pm on a Saturday night. There are noticeably more commercials. Duration 10 minutes 12 seconds. (Photo cropped from a group shot posted on Facebook by Brian's Dutch colleague Ferry Maat.)

3rd July 1973

By the time of this recording RNI's International Service is being run by Mebo Ltd., the owners of the ship, replacing the Dutch company responsible for the daytime shows. There are now fewer adverts and the station appears to be carrying more paid-play records. Mike Ross is on the air 8-10pm, and the news service is back. The Nova Park Hotel advert is voiced by Don Allen. Duration 9 minutes 49 seconds. (Photo of Mike from ‘Deejay & Radio Monthly’.)

7th July 1973

From the same month, one of RNI's most distinctive and popular voices, Graham Gill, on the 8-10pm show. It is good to hear that Todd Rundgren's I Saw The Light, first played on RNI more than a year earlier (as in the Brian McKenzie clip above), has finally become a hit. Duration 10 minutes 14 seconds. (Photo of Graham from Pam Wood's collection.)