LINKS

GENERAL SITES
 

The Offshore Echo's magazine site contains details of the latest issue, lots of information and a catalogue of offshore-related items for sale. There are also sections telling the stories of Radio Caroline, Swinging Radio England and Laser.
 
Monitor Magazine was a fantastically detailed and well-researched fanzine edited by the late Roland “Buster” Pearson. Some selected articles from back issues are now available on-line. There is also a second site devoted to the magazine which gives some of its history and reprints various articles.
 
Offshore Radio Museum is a virtual museum, housed in an imaginary ‘former dockside warehouse’, dedicated to recording and preserving the history of offshore radio.
 

Dr. Martin van der Ven launched his first website Offshore Radio Links in December 1996. A few years later it became the Offshore Radio Guide. He went on to add a number of spin-off sites but has now rationalised and reorganised them into a new site, Offshore Radio Nostalgia. Highly recommended.
 

The Pirate's Cove contains air-checks from various offshore stations from the sixties to the eighties.
 

Industry body the Radio Academy has its own Hall of Fame, honouring great UK broadcasters of the past and present. It currently includes ten former offshore DJs - Tony Blackburn, Kenny Everett, Stuart Henry, Adrian Love, John Peel, Rosko, Dave Lee Travis, Tommy Vance, Johnnie Walker and Tony Windsor.
 
Boom Radio's David Lloyd has interviewed numerous radio professionals for his website, some of them ex-pirates. They include Nick Bailey, Colin Berry, Tony Blackburn, Paul Burnett, Roger Day, Tom Edwards, Steve England, Roger Gale, Paul McKenna, Tony Prince, Rosko, Keith Skues and Johnnie Walker.
 

The nostalgia site Sixties City has a very good section on pirate radio.
 

For a number of articles on music radio in Britain, check out Transdiffusion.
 

 
The Wireless Waffler blogs at wirelesswaffle.wordpress.com.
 
There are a number of pages and groups relating to offshore radio on Facebook including Principality of Sealand, The First and Original Site for Radio Caroline North, Radio Caroline North - fun and free for all, Radio City 299 metres - The Tower Of Power, Friends Of Radio 270, Laser 558 & Hot Hits, Swinging Radio England / Britain Radio / Radio 355, Radio 390 + Former Red Sands Stations, Radio Northsea International remembered, Radio Essex on Maunsell Sea Fort Knock John, Felixstowe & Offshore Radio, Pirate Rulers of the Airwaves, We Love The Pirate Stations and Wonderful Radio London 266 metres. The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame is there too.

SPECIFIC STATION SITES
 
The UK's first and last pirate Radio Caroline has continued broadcasting, legally, via the internet and on AM from studios on land. This official site tells the history and has the latest news. There is also a sales page run by The Radio Caroline Society offering CDs, DVDs, and promotional clothing. All profits go towards the upkeep of the Ross Revenge, Caroline's last ship. There is also a separate oldies service, Caroline Flashback (see below).
 
rossrevengeofficial.com is a website devoted to Radio Caroline's last ship, mv Ross Revenge, and the plans for its future. There is also an older site at rossrevenge.co.uk which is more about the technical aspects and history of the ship.
 
The Lady Hits 50 blog was a diary of the events relating to Radio Caroline taking place fifty years earlier but it hasn't been updated for some time.
 
The late Jim Murphy operated a fascinating Caroline North Tribute Site. Sadly he died before completing entries on all his colleagues but it does contain biographical details of some of the DJs and excellent photographs, many taken by Jim himself while working on the ship. The contents of the site have now been rescued and made available again by Chris and Mary Payne of the Radio London website.
 

The Radio London site continues its unending task of tracking down offshore favourites of the past. This regularly updated site also tells the story of the more recent Radio London restricted service broadcasts and has a database of Fab 40 charts from 1965 to 1967, all supplemented with fascinating items of trivia. They have also incorporated Jempi Laevaert's Stonewashed Collection site, listing some Caroline Countdowns.
 
Svenn Martinsen (alias Derek Burroughs Jr.) has written a fascinating and extremely detailed study of the five radio stations that were based on the mv Olga Patricia: Radio England, Britain Radio, Radio 355 and the two Dutch outlets Radio Dolfijn and Radio 227. It can be found on his website.
 
Not a pirate as such, Radio Geronimo was a free-form music station that hired late night airtime from Radio Monte Carlo for a few months during 1970. Run by The Move's manager, Tony Secunda, and Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller, it was a prime example of hippy capitalism but sadly the money ran out. However Geronimo did produce some great programmes during its brief existence. Two of its DJs later joined up with the Caroline organisation to create the equally short-lived, but fondly remembered, Radio Seagull. Web-master Chris B is very keen to find recordings of either station to add to his site.
 
There are a few sites devoted to Radio Northsea International (RNI) including this Dutch one rni220.nl.
 
Offshore Echo's Radio Forts site contains photographs and memorabilia of the stations based on the anti-aircraft forts in the Thames estuary.
 
Project Redsand is campaigning to save Red Sands Fort, the war-time anti-aircraft installation in the Thames estuary that housed three offshore radio stations during the sixties.
 
There are photos of the Thames forts used for offshore broadcasting in the sixties at www.gulbekian.plus.com.
 

Roy Bates, the owner of Radio Essex and Station BBMS, moved to another Thames fort, Roughs Tower, when his pirate days were over. He renamed it Sealand and declared it an independent state. Sadly Roy is no longer with us (see tribute) but Sealand lives on. See www.sealandgov.org.

PERSONALITIES
 
Former seventies Caroline disc-jockey, Norman Barrington, has split his long-running website into two halves. normanb.com is devoted to his radio career while his other, see below, displays his passion for jingles.
 
Former Radio England “boss jock”, Caroline South and RNI breakfast DJ, Roger Day can now be heard on Boom Radio. He has a website at rogerday.co.uk.
 
In 1974 Brian Anderson was heard on Radio Caroline, Radio Seagull and Radio Mi Amigo. He has gone on to enjoy a long career in radio all over the world and you can see photos and hear audio, including some from his time on the mv Mi Amigo on his website briananderson.me.uk.
 
The late A.J Beirens, who used to host Northsea Goes DX and Our World In Action on RNI's short wave World Service, as well as programmes on Radios Atlantis and Caroline under the name ‘Michael O’, wrote a blog about his lifetime fascination with broadcasting at Getting High On Radio which is still available.
 
BBC Essex presenter Ray Clark was known as Mick Williams when he broadcast on Radio Caroline during the eighties. His website features photos, videos and memories from throughout his career, including his time working on the mv Ross Revenge.
 
Johnny Lewis was originally heard on Radio Caroline as ‘Stephen Bishop’ in 1979. Since then he has gone on to enjoy a long and successful broadcasting career. He has a website, Rounds And Sounds, devoted to this three main interests: beer, golf and radio. It includes photos taken on board the mv Mi Amigo.
 
Lion Keezer was a Dutch DJ on Radio Caroline during the seventies. He took some great photos of the offshore stations that operated at that time which he has now turned into an iBook, optimised for iPad and Mac. Pirate Radio Ships in the 70s is available from iTunes. See Lion's website for more details. He has also made a snazzy advert, available on YouTube. The price varies depending where you are. Britain: £7.99; Europe: €7.99; USA: $9.99.

TAPES AND MEMORABILIA
 
Over the years East Anglian Productions/Jumbo Records produced all manner of books, tapes, videos and CDs relating to offshore radio. Although no longer trading, some of their their products are occasionally available second-hand through Amazon, including the 3 CD set The Wonderful Radio London Story, a CD compilation of Radio London promotions and tapes Production Masters 1964-67 and the massive six CD set The Radio Caroline Story.
 
The magazine Offshore Echo's (see above) also offers an impressive range of items.
 
The old Caroline Movement used to sell cassettes of offshore recordings. Their catalogue has now been taken over by GJB Sales and a list of the available tapes can be obtained by sending an addressed C5 envelope, stamped to the value of 41p, to Tape Offer, P.O.Box 46, Romford, Essex RM7 8AY.
 
Pirate Memories offer recordings and memorabilia from the halcyon days of offshore radio broadcasting.
 
There are a couple of Dutch internet sites where members share recordings of offshore radio programmes: The Offshore Radio Club Forum and Radiotrefpunt (radio meeting point), formerly the Internet Radiocafé. Both are free to join.
 
Ray Andrews has kindly supplied a number of the air-checks on The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. He is interested in trading recordings of offshore stations from 1964 to 1974 and would like to hear from anyone with tapes to swap.
 
Chris Baird has also generously provided recordings. He is especially interested in trading tapes of Radio Luxembourg and can be contacted here.
 
Jim Nantz is an American who started listening to the current incarnation of Radio Caroline via the internet. Although he had never heard the station during its maritime days, he became fascinated by the history and asked people to send him their offshore recordings. They did, and he set up a web server to share them. Jim has now passed the running of this audio treasure-trove to Ray Robinson who has added to it substantially. There is now an amazing catalogue of airchecks available to download from the www.azanorak.com website.

JINGLES
 
One of the best jingle sites is operated by Norman Barrington. He was a disc-jockey on Radio Caroline during the seventies and has another site devoted to his offshore career, see above.
 
If you want to buy or swap jingles, check out Jingleweb. It is a Dutch site but has pages in English as well. It also has a page called Offshore Days which contains some excellent photos.
 

Most of the jingles used on offshore radio were produced by Pams of Dallas and you can hear a number of samples on their site. An American fan called Steven M Geisler has a section of his Steve's Radio & Railroads website devoted to jingles.

NON-UK PIRATES
 
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame only includes English-language broadcasters who were heard in Britain but there were a number of other countries where offshore radio flourished and websites that tell their stories:
 
The Swedish and Danish offshore stations pre-date their British counterparts: The Scandinavian Offshore Radio website is a general site covering all the stations in that region. There is also a specific site devoted to Radio Mercur. Per Alarud has pages devoted to Radio Syd and Radio Nord.
 

Europe's longest-lasting offshore station was Radio Veronica and there is an excellent Dutch language site celebrating it at www.norderney192.nl.
 
René van den Abeelen is a Dutch radio presenter. He has two fascinating websites. Renevandenabeelen.net has many pages devoted to Radio Veronica with lots of pictures and some old Super 8 movies shot in the seventies. There is also material about two other ships, RNI's Mebo II and Atlantis's Jeanine. At his other site radioships.com you can buy tin miniatures of several radio ships and the man-made “REM Island”.
 

When “Swinging” Radio England closed down, it was replaced by a Dutch station. One of its disc-jockeys, Look Boden (who also kindly contributed some of his photographs to the DJs' photo album) has set up his own cable station called, in memory of his offshore past, Radio 227.
 
The Radio Heritage Foundation site describes itself as “sharing the stories of Pacific Radio”. If you are interested in radio from Australia, New Zealand or anywhere in the Pacific, this is the site for you.
 
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame has a U.S. counterpart, The North American Pirate Radio Hall of Fame, which highlights clandestine radio stations and broadcasters on the other side of the Atlantic. Although most of these broadcasters are landbased, it does include one maritime pioneer, 2010 inductee Allan Weiner, who briefly operated Radio New York International from a ship in international waters off the Long Island coast in 1987 and 1988.
 
Swedish radio fan Ingemar Lindqvist has been operating The Radio Archives website in his own language since March 2006 (Swedish home page here) and now has an English language section. Both parts contain a number of interesting and unique recordings including some of British offshore stations.

LAND-BASED PIRATES
 
The Pirate Archive contains information and recordings of landbased pirates based in the English Midlands from the seventies to 2003.
 
The DX Archive has downloadable recordings of UK and Irish landbased pirates as well as various offshore stations.
 
For three years in the eighties TX Magazine catalogued the growth of London's landbased pirate radio stations. Later it took to the telephone network as AM/FM, adding a print newsletter and embracing the net. The AM/FM website brings together the issues of both publications with histories, photos and memorabilia of the eighties pirates.

AMERICAN AND CANADIAN TOP 40 RADIO
 
The pirate stations borrowed many of their ideas from trans-Atlantic Top 40 radio. To hear how the originals sounded, there are a number of highly recommended sites.
 

The Rock Radio Scrapbook has an immense range of American and Canadian recordings.
 
So does airchexx.com.
 
Northeast Airchecks concentrates on stations broadcasting in the north-eastern USA.
 
As well as these general sites, there are a number devoted to individual radio stations. Here are a few that we recommend:

KHJ, Los Angeles, the home of the original ‘boss jocks’.	WOLF, Syracuse, home of the original Bud Ballou.	WMCA, New York, the home of the “good guys”.	CHUM, Canada's original rock 'n' roll station.	“Tiger Radio” WQAM, Miami.
CKGM, Montreal, Canada.	WLS, Chicago, the “big 89”, home to Larry Lujack and Dick Biondi.	A website dedicated to the fans and former employees of WKLO, Louisville, Kentucky.	New York's legendary WABC, home of the “All Americans”.	Facebook page devoted to WFUN Miami.

STREAMING AUDIO
 
Britain Radio 355 plays easy-listening music, interspersed with the marvellous “Hallmark Of Quality” jingles created for the original Britain Radio back in 1966. There are some DJ-hosted shows on Sundays.
 
Caroline Flashback is an offshoot of Radio Caroline, playing pop oldies from the fifties to the early eighties. Part of the schedule consists of non-stop music but there are a number of presented shows too, some hosted by familiar voices including Tony Christian, Ray Clark, Dave Foster, Barry James, Johnny Lewis and Bill Rollins.
 
The internet resurrection of Radio Northsea International streams 24 hours a day with programmes in English, German and Dutch. Among the DJ line-up you can find former offshore presenter Freddie Belmont (Jeff Morris on Caroline).
 
Offshore radio expert Svenn Martinsen operates Radio Northern Star from Norway.
 

The Oldies Project offers non-stop music from the sixties and seventies. The station goes beyond the obvious hits and plays tracks you may not have heard for years including many that were in Radio London's Fab 40. They play the entire Fab 40 chart of this week 58 years ago, plus climbers if known, every Sunday morning at 11am (UK time) repeated the following Wednesday at 6pm. (Suggested listening via fmstream.org or onlineradiobox.com.)
 

Offshore Music Radio plays those classic sixties, seventies and eighties records that you loved on the pirates but which seldom get airplay now.
 
A number of former offshore Radio Caroline DJs including Dave Richards, Jeremy Chartham, Cliff Osbourne, Roger Mathews, Stevie Lane and Dave Asher can now be heard on Quasar Radio, an internet album station.
 
Oldies station Atlantis employs a number of ex-pirates: Peter Quinn, Steve England, Dave Owen, Roger Mathews and Bob Noakes.
 
At Easter 2014 Irish radio station Newstalk broadcast a documentary about the birth of Radio Caroline in the port of Greenore, presented by Declan Meehan. The programme can still be heard via Soundcloud. An interview with Caroline North DJ Jerry Leighton carried out by the documentary's producer Trevor Dann is also available.

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