18. PIONEER STATIONS MERGE

When Radio Atlanta took to the airwaves in the second week of May 1964, Caroline, the first of Britain’s pop privateers, was already claiming seven million listeners. Anchored just fourteen miles from each other, both stations were aiming at the same audience. Talks ensued between Project Atlanta and Ronan’s Planet Productions and on July 2nd the merger between the two stations was announced. At 8 pm on the same day Radio Atlanta closed down for the very last time. In their joint statement Ronan O’Rahilly and Alan Crawford said: "The decision to merge was taken due to the enormous interest from the public and advertisers in parts of England outside our original transmission area. The merger means that we will now cover the most populated areas of Great-Britain and will meet the demands of advertisers in the Midlands & North and from existing advertisers who are already taking time on the two stations”.

The next day the original Caroline ship set sail westward towards The Channel, hugging the coast and broadcasting as she went. On board the dj’s tried to predict at what time the ship would be passing important coastal towns. I remember Tom Lodge announcing “This is Radio Caroline steaming West along the South coast”. I managed to pick up the transmission until the ship passed Penzance, just before Land’s End. It took some four days for Caroline to reach her new anchorage off the Isle of Man in Ramsey Bay. Radio Caroline North continued broadcasting on 197m and Radio Caroline South on 201m, both advertising their spot on the dial as ‘one nine nine’, because it rhymed so well with Caroline. With digital frequency read-outs still far in the future hardly anyone noticed -or cared about- this white lie for euphony’s sake. In Zeebrugge, where I lived, I could receive both Carolines. Caroline South obviously offering by far the strongest signal on the Belgian coast. 

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13. PIRATES OFF THE BRITISH MAIN

In 1964, like modern day successors to the 16th century French, Dutch and English privateers off the Spanish Main, suddenly a flurry of radio pirates popped up along the British Main, being the Essex coast and the Thames Estuary; often described as pirate alley. Un­like their Caribbean predecessors, who went after Spain’s sil­ver bullion, the pop pirates had set their sights on London’s adver­tising dollar in an attempt to break the monopoly of the BBC and the large record com­­panies. The pioneer in the race to lay claim to the lucrative London market was Radio Caroline, financed by Irishman Ronan O’Rahilly, who hoped to emulate Veronica’s success. A former Danish passenger ferry Frederica was bought, renamed Caroline and fitted out as a radio ship in the Irish port of Greenore, owned by Ronan’s family. After two days of tests off Felixstowe Britain’s first off­shore station opened officially on Easter Sunday, March 29th 1964. Ronan had been egging on everyone connected with the organisation in order to be able to inaugurate the station on that day. 

In fact, at the time, I only heard about Caroline going on the air on Easter Monday, as I was spending my school holidays in the small Belgian village of Beerzel (near Malines) where my maternal grandparents lived. My immediate problem was that Caroline’s broadcast on the announced 199m (in fact 1520 kHz) was too close to Belgian regional radio in Antwerp. But as luck would have it my niece Maria Goris, who had just married, was in possession of a large Phillips portable radio, which could be turned away from most of the splutter involuntarily caused by the Antwerp station on the adjacent channel. After a few minutes’ tuning and turning the sound of Caroline’s bell rang through the small house. It would change my life forever. Over the years the start of Caroline has also become a very important date to me personally. More than half a century later I still use it as an all important benchmark. In my life BC means ‘Before Caroline’.

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