Patrick Starling in conversation with Colin Nicol

Colin Nicol was an early signing to Radio Atlanta and, after a broadcasting career which also included Radios Caroline, England and Luxembourg, the BBC and BFBS, he returned to his native Australia. He still remains fascinated by the history of offshore radio and has kindly provided many items of memorabilia to The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame.
 
Back in the eighties, he recorded chats with a number of people who had played important rôles in the birth of British offshore broadcasting. His interview with Allan Crawford is here, with Richard Harris here and there is also his conversation with Caroline music man Ken Evans. Other interviews have appeared in Offshore Echo's magazine. His conversation with Caroline South's on-shore contact Bill Scadden can be found on the Offshore Radio Nostalgia website.
 
This interview is with Patrick Starling, a studio engineer on Radio Caroline South for most of the station's existence, joining the ship in September 1964 and leaving just ahead of the Marine Offences Act in August 1967 - although he did also spend time with Britain Radio and Radio Caroline North. During the course of his studio duties he was occasionally referred to on air by the DJs, one of whom, Doug Kerr, gave him the nickname “The Child Scientist”.
 
This interview took place on 9th February 1984 and is copyright Colin Nicol. It has been edited slightly to improve readability. We are grateful to Colin for sharing it with us.

Graham Webb (December 1965) and Tommy Vance (January 1966) play “The Child Scientist's Picks to Click” (duration 1 minute 27 seconds)

Colin Nicol: Let's go right back to the beginning and start with how you first heard about pirate radio. How and where and what you first heard about it, the first word you heard.
 
Patrick Starling: Well, the first word that I heard on pirate radio was when Caroline came on the air at Easter in 1964. Before that I'd been interested in broadcasting and also films but because of the union problems and everything else, I'd never got into the film industry. I was very interested in tape recorders and recording. I bought a tape recorder and during the summer of 1964 I went off and started recording some vox pops^[1], and, of course, I started asking questions: what do people think about Radio Caroline?
 
CN: And you were doing this for yourself, were you?
 
PS: For myself, out of my own interest. And I edited all the vox pops together and I took them in to Caroline House and offered them as a piece of interest to (Managing Director) Ronan and his Programme Director at the time. His name I can't remember now.
 
CN: Chris Moore? Upstairs, way upstairs. Second floor.
 
PS: Second floor, yes. Anyway, they took the tape and were never to be heard of again. Weeks passed and I went to get this tape back. I went into Caroline House in Chesterfield Gardens and started asking for the tape and, of course, nobody could find it in the building. Gerry Duncan was called up, who was then putting together the studios in the basement of Caroline House. He was putting together all the commercial tapes which were sent out to the boat. He did not have the time to put the commercials together and he wanted somebody else to do this work. Anyway, in the course of talking to Gerry Duncan, he mentioned getting somebody to do this work and I said “well, I can do this work”.
 
CN: And what experience did you have up to then?
 
PS: I'd had no experience up to then except what I'd done off my own bat.
 
CN: What sort of work were you doing at that time?
 
PS: I was working in my father's business which, at the time, I wasn't totally interested in. I was interested from a family point of view but I was not interested in working in something like that. I wanted a bit more freedom.
 
CN: What was your father's business?
 
PS: My father was in engineering and electrical contracting and, as a result of that, I knew quite a bit about electrics and I taught myself quite a bit about electronics.
 
CN: Electronics, right.
 
PS: It was automatic switchgear and control systems for pumping stations. We did theatre lighting, general electric work. We were specialising in certain lines and developing something else. My father had branched out and was dealing in radioactive lightning conductors. Anyway, in the course of talking to Gerry Duncan, he thought that it was a good idea. He had listened to the tape that I'd edited together. He realised that I could operate a tape recorder, I could edit and he thought that I would be useful to him in doing the work which was mundane but necessary to get some revenue in for the operation.
 
CN: So you started off in production basically.
 
PS: Yeah. Anyway, this day he went up to see Mr. Gilman, who was in charge of the technical operations and Gilman interviewed me and said “Okay, fine”. In fact, I can always remember that interview because it was the first time that I had been for a job and had an interview. He asked me some technical questions. There was one question that I can always remember that I didn't know the answer to. The question was “Do you know the difference between star and delta?” and I said “no, I don't know the difference between star and delta”. And I said “now you've asked the question. I think you'd better tell me the answer” so we then had a 20 minute conversation about star and delta windings of electric motors and transformers and he said “Well, when do you want to start?” And I said “I'll start on Monday”. This was on a Friday so the next Monday, after the weekend, I started at Caroline House. I arrived in London on a Sunday night. I put myself up in a hotel, arrived at work on Monday morning in Caroline House with nowhere to live in London. It so happened that Gerry Duncan's secretary had started on exactly the same day and I spent quite a bit of the day going through the Evening Standard, trying to find somewhere to live, and she said “well, you're not doing at all well”. She said “I've got a spare bed. Why don't you come back and see if you like the place. You can stay there until you find somewhere to stay?” In fact, I lived in her flat for four weeks, after which I ended up on the boat. I was a technical operator for the disc jockeys out there, doing the mixing and spinning of the discs and everything else. And I didn't have to find anywhere else to live in London after that because I was living out on the boat. During the four weeks, in fact four to five weeks that I was in Caroline House, the work entailed compiling one large reel for each day of all the commercials which had to be transmitted, assembled in order on the tape so all that the disc jockeys on the boat had to do was to play the commercial and then stop the tape recorder ready to play the next commercial. I learnt a lot about (commercial) traffic because I was dealing with them a lot and I knew how the operation was running in London and, when the Australian engineer who was out on the boat wanted to go back to Australia, they asked me if I'd like to go out onto the boat and work out there.
 
CN: Who was that, do you remember?
 
PS: I can't remember his name because I only worked with him for about a week. There was an overlap time and he taught me the ropes out there^[2].
 
CN: I must have been there at the time. So you became permanently settled on the ship more or less?
 
PS: Permanently working on the ship.
 
CN: Were you two weeks on, one week off?
 
PS: We started off at two weeks on, one week off then there was the rumpus and they said right “we're going to have two weeks on, two weeks off”. So we went through a period of....
 
CN: When you talk about the rumpus, that was when people were objecting to being on for so long?
 
PS: Well it was going on quite a bit at the time. A lot of people objected to being on the boat for too long, yet other people didn't mind. It was then decreed that the disc jockeys on the boat were going to have two weeks on, two weeks off and the technical people would have two weeks on and one week off. In fact it was mainly two weeks on, one week off for the whole of the time I was on the boat.
 
CN: Let's come to some of the incidents that happened historically. You were on for what sort of period of time to begin with? You went on in mid-64, late-64?
 
PS: I think it was somewhere around September 25th '64 that I started on the boat.

Patrick Starling, left, and Tony Blackburn on the tender Offshore I. Photo taken by Patrick's engineering colleague Carl Thomson. More of his photos are here.

CN: And you finished your association when, do you remember?
 
PS: Well I stayed on Caroline until the week prior to the Marine Offences Bill. I was told a whole load of things about the Marine Offences Bill, that it would be perfectly safe and perfectly legal for me to work on the boat but, in my wisdom, I went down to Her Majesty's Stationary Office and bought copies of the Marine Offences Bill and read through it and realised that if I worked on the boat, being a British subject, I could be arrested for working on an unlicensed radio station. I could have a £400 fine and I think it was six months imprisonment and of course with that you also get a criminal record.
 
CN: And you decided it wasn't worth it?
 
PS: I think it was mainly the threat of the criminal record. And also it can be misconstrued into treason and all sorts of other things like that.
 
CN: So that is when you dropped out?
 
PS: That is when I dropped out.
 
CN: But in the meantime a lot of things happened. You were on the ship for longer than most people and you saw a number of the things that went on. What sort of incidents?
 
PS: A lot of incidents happened. To try and put them in chronological order, it is very difficult after all this time. There was one time, which I think was in 1965, when all the disc jockeys got very unhappy on the boat. They thought they weren't being paid enough money. They were back on two weeks on, one week off, and they wanted more time off. They thought the only way that they could do this was to walk off the boat altogether and close the whole station down. Being in the middle of this lot - I regarded myself as halfway between the disc jockeys and the engineers ... I wasn't an engineer because my work out there was audio and I didn't have much experience in transmitters and, because I'd been working with commercials and was responsible for the commercial traffic on the boat, (I thought) that I should stay on the boat and put out the commercials so even if there weren't any disc jockeys on the air, at least we could put out music and we could get revenue for the commercials that we played out. Keep the whole thing going. One of the things about being part of a radio station was that you had to be on the air because your listening audience expected you to be there.
 
CN: So you kept the show going without announcements? How long was this?
 
PS: Well the disc jockeys walked off the boat on the noon tender. They got onto the noon tender and they went back into Harwich. That night there was masses of communications on the telephone. The disc jockeys all went into London, I understand, confronted Ronan and had a chat with Ronan. The next day all the disc jockeys came back onto the boat. They had agreed some more money and the thing is they had agreed a new working time. And with the disc jockeys, I can remember, was Jimmy Houlihan^[3] who came out to the boat to make sure that all the disc jockeys came back (laughs). I can remember he walked into the studio - because I had been broadcasting from lunch time (the previous day), feeding music out until I think it was midnight, then I was up at six o'clock the next morning, back on the air again until lunch time - so Jimmy walked into the studio and said “Thank you very much indeed for doing that” and pressed a £10 note into my hand and said “This is from Ronan”. I can always remember that. I was a bit surprised because I didn't expect anything for doing it.
 
CN: So you had the whole show on your own for that period of time. But it was 24 hours or so and that was about it.
 
PS: It took about that time. Well it was from lunchtime to lunchtime, from one tender to the next tender. The tender arrived usually around about 12:30.
 
CN: Who were the disc jockeys on the ship at that time? Do you remember?
 
PS: I can't remember who because we had so many disc jockeys go through.
 
CN: Was Tom Lodge ... or Tony Blackburn?
 
PS: So the thing is I can't remember who was on the boat at that time. You never knew who was off the boat. It's difficult to name names.
 
CN: What other incidents do you remember that happened? There must have been a lot of things that happened.
 
PS: Well an incident which I think all the people who were involved will remember was the night that we broke the anchor chain. It was January the 19th - 20th 1966. I think that's the date of it. In the evening the Dutch crew used to have their dinner or high tea or whatever it was, the evening meal, at about 6:30 and they used to take about half an hour, three quarters of an hour and they used to have a sitting there. And then after that the disc jockeys, the engineers and the crew had a second sitting. My job at that time was, when the tender came out we took on the new commercial tapes and I got notification of changes in the broadcast log because we used to hold about a week's commercials in advance and of course there used to be cancellations of these commercials and additions. And because of my experience in London I was responsible for making these changes to the schedule. Also sponsored programmes like Leon Dala (?) and the Egg Show, which was the Egg Marketing Board. They had an hour in the morning .....
 
CN: What time was that?
 
PS: That was from 7 o'clock until 8 o'clock.
 
CN: What, they sponsored the hour?
 
PS: They sponsored the whole hour and we had to put ... They sent us out scripts for that, but the disc jockey was perfectly entitled to ad lib a script^[4]. I remember the Egg Marketing Board programme and I think we had to do so many spots, eight spots I think it was, in the hour. Also we had the religious programmes that went out from 6:30 to 7, I think it was, in the evening.
 
CN: You started talking about the (anchor) chain.
 
PS: I can remember there was Captain ... name's gone, there was Tony Visscher, the chief ship's engineer, and the ABs (able seamen) all sitting around the table, of which there were normally eight in the crew: a captain, an engineer, a chief engineer, assistant engineer, and two ABs, a cook and a steward. Sometimes we got extra people on board if it was necessary for extra work to be done on the boat and they dropped in to look after the ship. Anyway, they were sitting down around the table and a north-easterly gale got up and it was blowing quite strong. When a gale blew, the boat used to roll and rock and, if it was really strong, because we had the radio mast on the boat, it used to act a bit like a sail and this used to pull the boat and, as we were pitching up and down, the anchor chain used to pull tight. Anyway, we had the judders of the anchor chain going and nobody really thought very much about it until there was one almighty wrench of the boat, in which the boat jarred, went down and then instead of pulling on the anchor chain again, it went backwards and I can remember the Captain and the chief engineer jumping up from the table and saying “Christ, the anchor chain has gone”. This was quite early on in the evening. This panic, which I only discovered about afterwards, was conducted in Dutch so the English crew didn't know very much of what the crew were talking about. During the course of the evening, we were watching television and of course being on a boat, rolling around the place, we had to turn the TV aerial to keep it pointing at the land, at the transmitter at Sandy. Sandy was just behind Parkeston Quay.
 
CN: That's where the television transmitter was?
 
PS: Yes.
 
CN: The commercial television transmitter?
 
PS: Both. And of course, all of a sudden the TV set started drifting off and of course somebody went out and tried to point (the aerial) at the land ... Basically you could see where the lights were and you had a handle on the TV aerial and you pushed it down to where you thought it was in the right direction. Of course, we went out, put it in the direction, the next thing that happened, it would drift off again. In the course of this, a caption came up on Anglia Television saying “Radio Caroline, a message from the Walton coastguard, you are drifting”. This was on the TV. So we then talked to the crew and everybody else who kept us informed and said yes, the anchor chain had broken and that was all confirmed. The engineer was trying to get the engine going, which he succeeded in doing.
 
CN: He did get it going?
 
PS: Yes but what was happening was that the Mi Amigo was being blown 10 knots backwards in the gale but the engine could only do 8 knots forwards so in fact we were going backwards by about 2 knots. The Captain tried to get out of the wind and get some protection and see if he could do something. Anyway, once we knew that we were drifting and we started going inside the 3 mile limit, we realised that we had to shut down the transmitter because we would be breaking the law.
 
CN: You came inside the 3 mile limit....
 
PS: We were coming inside the 3 mile limit so we closed down the transmitter and then we considered our predicament. The engineers on board thought “what's going to happen if the Post Office come along and say you've got a transmitter there, it's not licensed”. We'd have to do something about it. So we proceeded to spike the transmitter, which entailed taking the capacitors out of the transmitter and putting matchsticks in the thing so the capacitors wouldn't work properly - so you couldn't bring the transmitter up, removing the crystals and essential parts. On board we had two 10 kilowatt transmitters but we were in the process of building a combiner unit on board the boat to give out 20 kilowatts. So what happened then was that we knew that we were going in because of the TV caption. We could see the shore coming up. Joe Public started driving up to the shore and trying to attract our attention by flashing their headlights at us.
 
CN: But you knew by this time?
 
PS: We did know by this time. The Captain was trying to find out where he was and of course at sea you could only find out your position by the flashing of the buoys and if you wanted to take a bearing on a buoy you had to count the flashes in the time period but, with all the people flashing on shore, he didn't have a clue where he was. Anyway the shore was coming up. The lifeboat came out but never found us.
 
CN: Why didn't the lifeboat find you?
 
PS: It was a very, very rough night. The thing was they could not locate us. Also the captain said because the British government would not acknowledge his calls despite being a legal ship, he would not use the radio telephone. He did not really consider himself in a state of distress because he thought that he could get himself out of there.
 
CN: He probably wasn't aware he was drifting as much as he was.
 
PS: Well he could not get his position because of all the people on shore flashing their lights. On the boat at this time were Tom Lodge, Tony Blackburn. I think Dave Lee Travis was on board. I can't remember who the other disc jockeys were^[5]. George Saunders was on, the engineer ... and we were told that we were drifting inshore and the thing is it was likely that we were going to be beached. Anyway, we did get beached^[6].
 
CN: What was the situation on the ship the moment you struck the ground? Was there a sudden strike?
 
PS: Oh, there was a sudden judder. In fact, at the time, Tom Lodge and Dave Lee Travis were playing chess, which seems a ridiculous thing to do but what else are you going to do but sit and wait? There's nothing you can do. You're just in the hands of the seamen and we didn't want to get in their way because they were out on deck. It was very rough, and the sea was ... the waves were incredibly high. There was an incident quite early on when they got everybody to wear life jackets, in case the boat did turn turtle, or anything happened to us, and they were going to swing out the lifeboats from the ship, but they didn't do that. I don't know the reasons why they didn't swing them out. Anyway, when we hit the shore, it was Tom Lodge and Dave Lee Travis playing chess on the mess room table, and all the pieces just slid totally across the board, and he said “well, that's wrecked the game”. Then the mate came down and said that we all had to stay inside because they were going to fire breeches buoys at us, and it was very dangerous. A breeches buoy is a great lump of cast iron metal, something like 18 inches long, with a bracket around the back to which there is a steel cable about a quarter of an inch in diameter attached, onto which is tied a line, which is paid out behind this lump of metal, which I understand has a rocket propellant inside it to push it, and is fired from a gun. So the lifeboat men, the shore lifeboat men, were going to fire this bolt out to the boat.
 
CN: You were sitting on the ship on a slant?
 
PS: It was actually ... When we arrived on the beach, the sea started breaking over the boat, and one of the things that somebody forgot about was to shut the skylights to the cabins below. And on the seaward side, it was impossible to get to because the sea was so strong but the windows were open, so the sea started coming in. We managed to close the windows.
 
CN: These were the roof hatches?
 
PS: The roof hatches down to the cabins. But they weren't bolted down, so as the waves broke, these used to spurt in under the sides of the hatch cover, because they weren't bolted down and watertight. Anyway whilst they were firing the lines, we were all inside. They fired the first line which went somewhere around about 50 to 100 feet behind the stern of the boat. They then fired a second line which went through the rigging of the boat and of course the thin line attached to the rocket caught on the aerial guys and that sheared the line, and that fell back into the sea, so we lost that one. They then fired a third one, which hit the side of the boat and there was an almighty bang, and everybody wondered what the hell had happened, and we were glad to be inside.
 
CN: The ship must have been rolling around a lot.
 
PS: Well, it wasn't rolling because it was on the beach. It was jammed on the beach. The waves were still breaking over it. Then after that, the Captain got the line which we had on board the boat and fired that onto the shore, and we succeeded in getting a line from the boat to the shore, to which they tied a pulley which had two hawsers around it, and this was dragged out to the boat and tied onto one of the aft lifeboat davits. We were told that we were all going to go off, all the crew, and we weren't to take anything with us, but I decided the best thing to do was to take all the broadcast logs, so in fact we had proof that we broadcast the ads, thinking we could get the money for it (laughs).
 
CN: It was proof that you were broadcasting up to a point.
 
PS: So these were all wrapped up in polythene bags and papers and stuffed down inside my clothes to try and keep them dry. We then, in turn, all exited the boat via breeches buoy.
 
CN: Being strapped to this pulley arrangement on the shore, over the water? Did you get wet on the way?
 
PS: Coming off the boat, I can remember, we weren't allowed to bring any of our personal effects which were down in the cabins, but the majority of people had packed all their stuff into cases and things. We were taken off by breeches buoy, and to come off the boat by breeches buoy you had a lifebelt which had stitched to it a large canvas, what you'd call a pair of shorts. So, in fact, around your waist you had the lifebelt, and you were sitting in these legless pants. To be taken ashore, you had to jump off the side of the boat, over the water.
 
CN: In this thing?
 
PS: In this thing, and hang there and the people on shore pulled you in on one rope while paying out the other rope. So there were two teams on shore and I can remember somebody shouting, “heave”, then all of a sudden you felt yourself being pulled up into the air and then the same person shouting, “ho”, which prompted the other crew to let out a bit of rope. So, in fact, you had this heave, ho, the whole time and you were being lifted up and down above the sea. And it got to the point near the shore where you dropped into the water, got yourself absolutely soaked, and then were hoisted out again as they pulled on the rope. And, of course, being January, there was snow on the shore, the sea was absolutely freezing and by the time you got onto shore, you were frozen stiff and wet and feeling very, very miserable. I can't remember very much about what happened on the beach, but I remember arriving in an ambulance and sitting there talking to the rest of everybody else and saying “Christ, that's quite an experience”, teeth chattering, very cold, and somebody had put blankets around us to get us warm and we were taken off to a hotel in Walton, I think it was. On the way to the hotel, we were taken around to a ship's chandler's and the poor guy had been called out of bed because it was now something like one o'clock in the morning and we were told that we could have some dry clothes. So we all got given a free pair of jeans, some thick woolly socks, and I think it was some plimsolls or something for our feet, all of which were oversized, because I can remember that I had to virtually knot the front of the jeans to wear them. And we were then taken to a hotel. I was put into a room in the hotel, and I was absolutely exhausted and fell fast asleep. The next morning I woke up, I think somewhere around about 9:30. I went downstairs after putting on these dry clothes and had breakfast. Then there was great chatter about trying to re-float the boat, that the Wijsmullers in Holland had dispatched the tug Titan to salvage the Mi Amigo and that was standing offshore, and they were trying to get a line on board. All the people off the boat, all the disc jockeys and engineers, said “well, we've got personal possessions on the boat, can we go and collect them?” And they said “OK, but we've got to arrange transport”. So a minibus was arranged and we were taken out to the beach where the Mi Amigo was. On the breakwater at the back of the beach, which I don't remember anything of the night before, there were crowds and crowds of people, all standing about looking at the poor Mi Amigo, with a slight list on, with her nose, I should think, something like 10 feet off a concrete pier, and her stern something like 18 feet off a groyne and I remember thinking then “my Christ, the Captain must have been very lucky to get it onto the beach like that” because if it had hit the groyne, it would have gone straight through the plates in the bottom of the boat. If it had hit the concrete pier, then the thing would have smashed up the whole boat. But here she was, sitting slap-bang in the middle of this beach, on sand. It must have been the only sandy bit of the coastline for miles in either direction.

Some of the ship-wrecked crew visit the Mi Amigo. Tom Lodge, top, Dave Lee Travis, second from top, Graham Webb, standing on left, and Patrick. Photo by Carl Thomson.

CN: Was she high and dry when you saw her there?
 
PS: Yes, she was absolutely high and dry because it was low tide. We walked down the beach, and around the boat. There were all the members of the crew. They all had scrapers and they'd scraped the whole of the side of the bottom. They'd cleaned all the barnacles and anything that was fouling the bottom of the boat, and made it absolutely clean all the way round the boat. So, in fact, if she did get off, it would make it easier to pull her off the beach that way. They'd dug down into the sand and cleaned as far down as they could. Up the side of the boat, there was a ladder, and we climbed up the ladder. There was a policeman there saying that we couldn't go on board. We then talked to him and said that we had to collect our personal effects from the boat. There was also a customs officer there, keeping guard. When they knew who we were, they said “OK, fine, go and collect your things”. We then went on board and started collecting things. Somebody says, with all these people out there, why don't we give them a programme? So we switched on the studio. I think one of the disc jockeys started doing a programme, broadcasting through the monitor speakers in the next-door studio. This could be heard through the porthole window by all the people on shore. There were great cheers and shouts on there. Of course, we wanted them to think that we were transmitting. You could see all these people trying to listen to their radios.
 
CN: Who was the disc jockey who was playing?
 
PS: I can't remember who it was at this time. It was probably somebody like Dave Lee Travis, Tony Blackburn, somebody like that. Anyway, we sat on board. I think we had a few beers with the people there. We talked to the crew and found out what had happened during the night and what was happening. We heard about the Titan coming over and how they were straightening up the boat. Anyway, we went back to the hotel and spent the evening there, went out and had a meal. The next day they planned to get the boat off early in the morning. The Titan put a cable from offshore around the bowels of the Mi Amigo onto the capstan. The plan was that at the next high tide, which would be higher than the previous night, they hoped that they would be able to pull the boat off the beach to salvage her. Anyway, at the next tide, the Titan got the cable onto the boat. They had a mile of cable out from the bowels of the Mi Amigo to the Titan. They had got a small motorboat and brought the end of the cable in and they had winched that off and pulled the boat. The tide rose to its highest and the Titan ...
 
CN: You were there watching all this?
 
PS: No, I heard about this afterwards.
 
CN: Yes, because you were at your hotel.
 
PS: I went back to the hotel. The Titan tried to pull the boat off and, of course, it wouldn't move at all. She was stuck there on the sand. They gave up because the tide started falling, but the cable was still out. So the Titan sat out off the coast with the Mi Amigo on the beach. The only thing they could do now was to try the next tide. So they waited for that to happen and when the high tide came, the Titan charged off across the North Sea - she was capable of doing something like 27 to 30 knots, I think it was - she charged off, pulling the cable behind her but what they hadn't anticipated was that the cable, in pulling tight, snagged around a wreck and the cable snapped, sheared, and the Titan went charging off, thinking they'd pulled the boat off the beach, when in fact they'd broken that cable. So the Mi Amigo now was on the beach, the Titan had broken its cable and they didn't know how to get it off. Anyway, Tony Visscher, the engineer, suggested that at the next high tide, they should try and winch the bow of the boat round with the ship's winch and see if they could winch themselves off because the cable appeared to be tight around the wreck.
 
CN: Which was just an unknown wreck?
 
PS: An unknown wreck underneath the water.
 
CN: How far out was the wreck?
 
PS: I don't know. I don't know where it was. I don't think anybody really knows where it was. Anyway, the next night, in fact we did go down to see the boat the next day and talk to the crew and chat to them but, London-wise, they thought that they'd have to see how things went. They were thinking of sending the disc jockeys home. Some of us stayed out there ... it was the Harcourt Hotel. I think it was the Harcourt.
 
CN: It was the Harcourt Shipping Agency.
 
PS: Yes. Anyway, that next high tide, Tony Visscher and the ABs started up the winch on the bow of the boat, got the cable around the winch and started easing the bow of the boat off the beach and it gradually came round and, as the tide lifted the boat, it became easier and easier. As there was no way of pulling the boat further, Tony dashed back, started the ship's engine and actually, high and dry, he ran the ship's engine with no cooling in it but the propeller was going and it was pushing the Mi Amigo off the beach. They dropped the cable which was around the wreck and they sailed the Mi Amigo off out to its anchorage and dropped the ship's anchor.
 
CN: Back to its old anchorage?
 
PS: Somewhere near, somewhere near it, outside the three mile limit. Onshore, as far as I was concerned, Mr. Gilman came down to the hotel and we were discussing what to do. And I said “we should go out to the boat and see what the state of the technical equipment is” because there had been water all over the boat and there might have been a lot of damage done. So we'd see what needed to be done and appraise the situation.” So that day we were taken out to the Mi Amigo. We took all our clothes and possessions and things with us because it was either stay out there or come back and go home. (Of the engineers) Ted Walters had come back on board, I believe. There was Carl Thomson and myself, and we went out on the tender to see the Mi Amigo. We climbed on board to find that some of the rivets had popped from the bottom of the boat underneath the fresh water tanks. They were pumping this water out but they knew that they had to go to dry dock because there was nothing they could do to stop it. She was in a pretty bad state of repair. And because of running the ship's engine without any coolant in it, no sea water running through it, that had wrecked the engine, which needed a serious overhaul. I said to Tony, I said “Are you going to be responsible when the ship goes to Holland for all this equipment on board?” Tony says “No, no, no, it's all part of Caroline and the engineers”. Well, it was agreed it was best if somebody (from Caroline) went to Holland with the equipment to look after the transmitter and the records in the studios and look after what was going on. For various reasons, I think, Carl was scheduled to go on to Radio Caroline North, Ted, I don't think, wanted to do the journey across to Holland and so I was duly asked if I would go to Holland, which I accepted. So they all left and I was left on board to actually ...
 
CN: You sailed over with Carl?
 
PS: Oh yes (remembering), Carl did go to Holland. Ted Walters went up to the Caroline North.
 
CN: But the ship, the Mi Amigo, was towed over there, wasn't she?
 
PS: The next day, after drying the cabins out ... everything smelled musty and there were records all over the record library. We were trying to tidy the place up. Also the transmitter room was partially under water because of the water which was leaking underneath the water tanks. We took a line on in the evening of the next day and we started out for Holland, heading in the direction of IJmuiden. We set off across the North Sea. The Titan was something like half an hour to three quarters of an hour ahead of us and we were trailing on behind. We were batting along at a rate of knots and they said “we should be in Holland in about eight hours” - the following morning. We then ate and relaxed and sort of wondered about it. In fact, it was quite a peaceful night. It was quite calm. I remember saying to Tony “I'm going to go down to the cabin for a kip”. And he said to me, he said “I wouldn't sleep down there. The water's coming in so much. I advise you to sleep in the stateroom”. So, taking his advice, I did sleep in the stateroom that night.

NOTES

Interview © Colin Nicol.
Continued over the page.