A meeting with the Prince of Sealand

Thursday 08/02/07 

Story:   A meeting with the Prince of Sealand.

 

Snow had been forecast and snow was everywhere. As usual for London the falling snow soon turned into rain and the fallen snow into slush. This is the worst kind of snow.

We’d been due to leave the office at 0800 but none of the crew had managed to get to the office even by 0830, myself excluded, I’m just lucky that way, I guess.

The Principality of Sealand is supposedly the world’s smallest country. It was originally called Rough Towers and built during WWII as a pre-radar detection/deterrent station against German bombers following the Thames estuary to London. It is six miles of the coast in what were international waters and was claimed as an independent territory in 1966/7. It has it’s own passports, coins stamps, jail, flag amongst other things.

Anyway my producer’s diligent search, after mine had failed, had managed to track down Michael Bates and he’d agreed to an interview, unfortunately it was not to involve a visit to Sealand itself but be at his UK land address in Leigh, Southend-on-Sea. He had already informed us that there were to be no visits to Sealand until April or May, what we also found out was that there was a £4,000 filming fee for any media/film crews wishing to film on the principality. I had visions of us hiring our own boat from Felixstowe or Harwich and just filming the micronation from the rough waters of the north sea that surround it. That at least would give us something to broadcast, which we could follow up on should we manage to negotiate a more realistic filming fee and chance in the Spring.

The interview was ok, lacking in location relevance so just focused on showing our subject to be very much on land at the moment.  He did produce a case full of items from Sealand, newspaper and magazine articles, passports, coins stamps and the flag.

I shot them all, including some own drawings showing the plans of the original sea fort complete with its AA guns. We wanted some shots of Mr Bates doing something, sort of as an introduction to him so I persuaded him to get on his warm jacket and have a play with his dog in the garden. The scene was ok if a little contrived but the worst thing was that I managed to step in his dog’s pooh which was fairly ubiquitous and well hidden on the lawn under all the snow!