MARINE

During Worldwar 2 defence forts were built around the coast of Kent and Essex in the U.K. There were two types of forts built, the navy forts and army forts. On the navy forts there was a crew of about 100, on the army forts as much as 265 men lived and worked to defend Great Britain against enemy ships and aircrafts. In the post war years the forts were abandoned and forgotten.

However in the mid 1960s they were once again discovered by groups of people with the intention to start offshore radio stations, after all they were outside the three mile limit, so in international waters and no investments in ships were needed. Ofcourse by 1967 only two forts were found to be in international waters. But at least for 3 years the stations on the forts were able to broadcast from the forts.

Two books have been published about the construction and role of the forts in WW2. The Maunsell Sea Forts part One ISBN 09524303-0-4 and The Maunsell Sea Forts part Two ISBN 09524303-1-2.

Black and white were obtained from the FRA in the late 60s. Shivering Sands and Knock John

under tow were bought byHans Knot from the Imperial War Museum, colour photos of the forts

were on sale in bookshops round Kent and Essex in the mid 90s. The last Red Sands colour photo

from Bob Le - Roy U.K. Carstickers, ratecards, qsl cards, letters, programme scedules come

This map shows the position of the forts situated of the Kent and Essex coast. Roughs tower was never used for offshore radio broadcast and is up to the present 2002 used by the Bates family and called Sealand. In the mid 60s Bates owned and operated Radio Essex on the Knock John Tower. The Sunk Head Tower was used for a short time by Tower Radio. Tongue Sands Naval Fort was situated some 2 miles of the Margate coast and was planned to become Radio Kent, a sister station for Radio Essex. The Great Nore Army Tower was destroyed in 1961, she was in a shipping lane. Shivering Sands Army Tower was home for Radio Sutch and later the legendary Radio City. Red Sands Army Fort was always the home of the sweet music stations, Radio Invicta, KING and the classiest of all offshore broadcasters Radio 390. A true red carpet station broadcasting from the Red Sands Tower. The first offshore broadcast ever from one of the sea forts was on 27th May 1964 by Radio Sutch, the last ever broadcast from a sea fort was on 28th July 1967 by Radio 390.

The Knock John Tower towed out to sea August 1 1942. During the tow the crew was onboard the tower and stayed on the tower as she was placed into position.

The building of the Shivering Sands Tower in 1943 at the Red Lion Wharf in Gravesend.

Lets move onto Radio Essex on the Knock John Tower, owned and operated by Roy Bates between 27th October 1965 and 25th December 1966. The Fort Knock John is situated in the Thames Estuary and Essex was heard on 222 mtrs medium wave.

And this is how the supplies got onto the fort....pulling them up from the tender onto the fort. One of the jobs of a Radio Essex deejay.

Here's Essex Deejay Andy Cadier< Martin Kayne> reporting on working conditions on Radio Essex:

Radio Essex was based on Knock John Fort, an ex-WW2 fortification in the
outer Thames estuary.
The generator used was one of three Gardner engines that were a part of the
forts original equipment.  These were located in the 'top floor of the
circular rooms in the two legs of the tower, two in the rear leg and one in
the front leg nearest the loading/landing stage.
There was a ventilator in the wall to allow air to reach the cooling
radiator and the exhaust pipe went through another small hole.  Most of the
distribution wiring remained including the fuse-box, though most of the
light switches were missing.  These in the working area of the fort were
replaced while other were activated by carefully touching two wires
together.  Much of the furniture from the military days remained including
benches and tables and cupboards.

The studio was on the main floor of the superstructure in a place we called
the broom cupboard, I think it was originally a store about 1.5 metres by 3
metres.  The audio equipment was arranged in the usual horseshoe shape
design.  To the left was a Vortexion tape recorder that was mainly used to
playing back commercials.  In front of the DJ was a 50 watt amplifier (I
think made by RSC) that included  4 variable inputs, two channels carried
the presenters and the news microphones and the other 2 took the output of a
homebuilt mixer that was connected to the turntables and the fourth to the
Vortexion recorder.  The homebuilt mixer had three volume controls and three
switches,  Feeding this were two Garrard 401 turntables with Decca Deram
pickups and diamond styli and a stand-by turntable (used to play jingles
from an LP record) made by Collaro, and used then mainly in domestic record
players.  The switches on the mixer were to allow pre-fade listening to
records, the amplification for this and the headphones was concealed beneath
the desk.  Also in front of the DJ was a Reslo ribbon microphone on a
flexible stem which was fixed to the wall.  Also on the wall, other than an
electric battery powered clock was a home made VU (Volume Unit) meter so
presenters could keep the audio output at the required level.  To the
extreme right was a microphone hanging from the ceiling (due to lack of
space) and was used for news reading.  The studio door was made of heavy
steel and did much to obscure the noise of the generator, the walls within
the studio were lined in red blankets to create a suitable acoustic
environment for the use of the microphones.  The record library was on a
number of shelves directly behind the DJ who sat on a rather basic wooden
chair.

The transmitter room was next-door to the studio and a small hole had been
drilled through the steel wall for cables to pass through.  An old RCA
telegraphy transmitter was facing the door, not in a cabinet so you could
see all the components.  It was fed by a heavy electricity cable to the
generator not far away on the floor below.  The long wire antenna used was
fed through a port hole via some small insulators and then hung from
scaffolding poles that had been erected on the deck partly supported by the
old guns that remained there at the time.  The engineers always had a
problem with the antenna loading as the aerial tended to use the sea as a
ground plane, as the tide rose and fell so did the efficiency of the aerial.
The transmitter room had an engineers work bench and additional
amplification equipment.  As time passed the engineers built another
transmitter with similar components to the original, as thoughts had existed
for the starting of a "Radio Kent"  This expansion in fact never took place.
The original crystal for Radio Essex's 222 metres was slightly off channel
and caused a heterodyne with a co-channel French station, particularly at
night.  The engineers built a VFO (Variable Frequency Oscillator) so they
could manually tune to the right frequency, however this did not offer very
good stability and a new crystal was obtained.

Radio Essex was the first UK station to broadcast 24 hours a day.  During
the day it tried  to pioneer the concept of local broadcasting and
advertising.  Many local business people were very wary of buying radio
advertising, it was a medium totally new to them.  Radio Essex programmes
were not aimed at the same market as Radio London and Caroline and in fact
had a variety of programmes not unsimilar to the BBC.....except the BBC
could not play records all day because of an agreement with the musicians
union.  Radio Essex programmes featured rythem and blues, jazz, music from
shows, the big bands from the 30's to 50's and a whole repertoir of easy
listening music. At night things changed as it was found that after midnight
the French station, also on 222m closed down giving a clear frequency over
the UK and much of Europe.  It was soon discovered that the so-called
'graveyard' shift was actually very much alive with letters arriving from
all over Europe including Norway.  So programmes like the Essex Beat Club
and the Night Owl Show contained much more modern and up tempo music and
became very popular among shift workers.