August 1974 - continued |
31st August:On RNI a number of special programmes were broadcast in various languages on the short wave outlet while, on medium wave, the Dutch DJs presented their last shows live from the ship.
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STEVE ENGLAND |
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Looking back after all these years I am struck with how happy a ship Radio Atlantis was. I was grateful to get my start on Radio Caroline, but it was a time fraught with insecurity and difficulties. The Jeanine was not like that
at all. Atlantis was like family and there was genuine friendship and warmth between us all. Well, yes, we did not have the powerful transmitter or the big mast - but this was more than made up for with the genuine enthusiasm
we all seemed to have for what we were doing. When I first travelled out to the ship with Andy Anderson we arrived quite late at night and as we approached the Jeanine in the dark the tender put on huge floodlights - and there it was, filling our field of vision. Apart from its size, it wasn't a very inspiring sight - a rusty old trawler with very little lighting on board. Once on the ship I was told that one member of the crew had been in bed for over a week and left with the departing tender. The following day I was able to look round the whole ship with Andy and Crispian St John, who I shared a cabin with on Caroline and who, during the feeble test transmissions, had invited me to join him on Atlantis. I could see it had the embryonic “good bones” to be a reasonable radio station. They had started to build two enclosures for studios on the bridge, a bridge which had been stripped out long ago. Technically the ship was a hulk as the engine had also been removed after a fire. The bridge was nice and airy and had good light. There was also space for a small music library and a front section where a makeshift studio had been assembled from the studio equipment sent out to the ship which was balanced on the cardboard boxes the equipment had arrived in. This later became a social area we called ‘The Casbah’. There was a 1 kilowatt transmitter, originally from the REM Island, at the front of the hold which was in working condition. There was also the ten kilowatt ex-Radio 270 transmitter with lots of parts missing and a small 18 inch frame that I think had housed the Radio Condor transmitter. Condor had built a studio at the other end of the hold. Not a great decision as the hold was damp and rather smelly. No wonder Atlantis planned to move the studios to the bridge. There was a reasonable kitchen, a comfortable mess room, and usable showers and toilets. There were 3 cabins on the mess room deck and further cabins down some stairs to a lower deck. We set to work to finish the studios. Luckily I had done a fair bit of practical woodwork running mobile discotheques. Andy started to wire in the equipment and get the transmitter sorted. I had been a jingle collector and brought some of my tapes out with me. We agreed that what we wanted to do was a Top 40 station that sounded like the pirate radio stations of the 1960s, like Radio London, Radio England, Caroline at that time and Radio City. We thought the fun and pace of these stations was missing from the offerings of RNI and Caroline. Over the first few weeks things moved very swiftly. We were told of a great Top 40 DJ on Radio Jackie called Dave Owen. When he joined us he looked like a hippie with long hair, a beard, and wearing a full length ex-army greatcoat but he fitted right in and was a really good Top 40 DJ. Soon Andy's girlfriend (whom he later married and divorced twice!) joined us, as did my wife Debbie who just turned up to the ship one day, much to my consternation at the time but now I know I should have been very grateful. We heard that Dave Rogers was looking for a job. He had a great voice with a lovely slight West Country burr and joined us to do programmes and start a news service, which, in true pirate fashion was usually nicked from the BBC. I was offered an RCA cart machine which I had been told was once on Radio London and lent another one by a listener who dealt in second hand studio equipment. The one on loan never worked but the RCA one was great and became the backbone of our on air studio. Since we only had one working cart machine, Andy wired the 2 Revox tape recorders to the mixer's PFL (pre-fade listen) channel. This allowed us to record from the cart machine while a record was going out on air. If we wanted to do a link with several jingles or effects, we could dump a jingle from the cart machine to the Revox. When the record came to an end, we could play a cart live, followed by what we had dumped on the Revox, change the cart while this was going out and play another cart after that. It sounded like we had a ton of cart machines! I also made some pre-prepared production over record intros and special phased versions of current hits. I took many of the unusual versions of PAMS jingles in my collection and made them into Atlantis jingles. Add in a fast and sometimes silly presentation style (yes, it was a bit too silly sometimes) but it all went to make an exciting and fun-filled sound like the sixties pirates we all admired. Around this time Crispian St John left and started to do a few shows from the Oostburg studios. Later he was stopped by the border police on his re-entry to the UK and got into hot water about something he had done, running a dating site long before Atlantis. He never came back and Andy told Adriaan I should take over as Programme Controller of the International Service. I had been in touch with the ex-Radio 270 DJ Leon Tipler when he had sent an audition tape out to Caroline. Chris Cary had played it to us, calling him “the new Kenny Everett”. I went to see Leon in his Kidderminster home where he lived with his elderly, and charming, parents. He was very good friends with Clifford T Ward, who, as well as being a singer was a great voice artist. Leon was full of ideas and imagination which he had turned into comedy plays and shows which he had recorded with Cliff and his other friends. He agreed to send us free shows on tape under the name Scott Mitchell. We were blown away when his first show arrived full of characters and very funny. Afterwards others joined him in sending regular show tapes to us, including Dave Townsend and Ray Warner (Anderson). Occasionally we would have a guest DJ out on the Jeanine. Rob Day, who claimed to be a Canadian was one. He now employs me on his Atlantis on-line station! My friend Eddie Austin also came out, but sadly Adriaan didn't like his voice and asked me to take him off air. AJ Beirens who was a director of Townsend Thoresen Ferries and who had close links to RNI sent us tapes of his soul shows under the name Michael O after clearing it with (RNI owners) Meister and Bollier. Terry Davis also came out to the ship, taking a few weeks off from university. He had been on RNI and was another good DJ. He could also sing and made us special versions of some Beatles songs by cancelling out the original Beatles vocals and adding his own. During the day we put out the Flemish programme, tapes that had been recorded on land in the Atlantis studios in Oostburg. From 6pm until (I think) 8am we were The International Service. Andy Anderson was a really good DJ as well as a clever engineer. Early on I had mentioned that we needed an audio compressor on the output and he built one with the light bulb from a torch and some spare components he had on board. Everyone seemed to get on really well. We had 3 non-broadcast staff on board; Raff, a friendly Scottish guy, Dean, an American and Derek who was the generator engineer. Dean and Derek ended up doing the occasional show, as did Lynda Anderson. (Andy married her for the first time during the Atlantis period.) My wife at that time, Debbie, also did regular shows and read the news. The summer of 1974 was wonderful and there were lots of times when the sea was like a mirror. We took advantage of that and got out the little rubber boat (we had no engine) on the end of a long line of rope. In case of the line snapping and us drifting away from the boat we always loaded the rubber boat with beer and Choco Mel (a chocolate drink). How utterly foolish. Lots of good natured practical jokes were played too. We decided to do an outside broadcast from the deck and Andy made a really long mic cable plugged in at the studio. It was so long that we decided to take it out on the rubber boat. When we mentioned that we were passing the toilet outlet Raff dashed to the toilets and flushed them all soaking us. When Rob Day was on board we had him change the Flemish tapes one day - and whilst he was upstairs in the studio everyone except me, who was in bed, hid in a secret cabin. Rob couldn't find anyone on board for an hour. It was like the Mary Celeste. Rob thought he was going mad but went up to change the tape again an hour later then came down to find everyone sitting around and behaving quite naturally which freaked him out even more. Our on-shore contact, and the people who arranged the tenders and looked after us when we left the ship, were Jerry and Vonny, a couple of Indonesian extraction. They got the job as they had a CB radio and had made contact with the ship in the early days. They really did look after us. However Vonny fell for Dave Rogers in a big way (unreciprocated by Dave) and this made things somewhat difficult for me as I think she had her eye on replacing me as programme controller with Dave. Dave had nothing to do with this. I took Leon Tipler out to Holland to take him to the ship, but Vonny said Adriaan would not allow him on board. I think this was Vonny's doing and all part of her plan. I said if he doesn't go out to the ship, neither would I. It was an impasse. Debbie and I left with Leon and when I arrived at Zeebrugge Ferry Terminal we were met by AJ Beirens who took myself, Debbie and Leon to his office and called Adriaan Van Landschoot. By this time I was regretting my rash decision and AJ sorted out a meeting with Adriaan the following day. We went to stay in AJ's flat and Leon went to spend a week in our flat in Deal. The following morning, after giving me a good dressing down, Adriaan sent Debbie and me back to the ship. It was never quite the same after that. We were told of the intended closure some weeks before the Dutch law to stop pirate radio was introduced. We all had heard the mournful closedown of RNI and decided ours would be a party, a celebration of the station's spirit and so it was. I had the dubious pleasure of hosting the closedown show - like many of the pirate radio closedowns I had heard in the past. It was a fun filled, friendly, funny show. Atlantis still remains one of the highlights of my life with warm memories of the great people I worked with on that ship - many of whom are now gone. I have such fond recollections of that special time and I hope we managed to give everyone listening a good time and happy memories too. |
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On RNI, all the DJs - from both the Dutch and International Service - join station manager John de Mol in the studio during the final minutes. The first voice is Ferry Maat. Taken from a studio recording shared on
The Offshore Radio Club Forum by Hans Hendriks. Our thanks to him (duration 10 minutes 46 seconds)|
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Approaching midnight you hear crew-member Peter Haze then Tony Allan. At midnight Tony plays All You Need is
Love, just as Johnnie Walker did seven years earlier. He says hello to some friends and dedicates Tim Hardin's Simple Song Of
Freedom to Mr van Doorn the Dutch minister with responsibility for broadcasting who has just outlawed the offshore stations. Recording from the Offshore Radio Archive (duration 4 minutes 45 seconds)