The British Ministry of Defence even had secret plans, now declassified, to take Sealand by force.īut it wasn't just the British government that wanted to dislodge the family. The rogue state remained a nuisance to the British government.

Teenaged Michael and Penny would fire off warning shots and toss Molotov cocktails overboard to defend their home. They also dealt with periodic invasion attempts from rivals and buccaneers.

Pirate radio stations filled the gap in the market and launched on ships and old forts. The BBC, which had a monopoly on broadcasting in Britain, gave rock bands just an hour of airtime a week. Sealand has an unusual history.īy the 1960s, the North Sea was the center of the burgeoning unlicensed commercial radio business in the U.K. Marines manned it during the war to shoot down German warplanes flying bombing raids on London. Sealand, which has a land mass the size of roughly two tennis courts, got its start as 'His Majesty's Roughs Tower.' It was a hastily constructed artillery fort built in the North Sea during World War II. Sealand's brief history is packed with tales of piracy, coups, countercoups, rogues and off-shore Internet hijinks.

His family's kingdom, which has just one permanent resident, was declared an independent state in 1967 by his father, Roy Bates -an enterprising, swashbuckling World War II veteran. Prince Michael Bates, reigning monarch of the Principality of Sealand, has a unique plan if the British Navy rolls up to reclaim his micronation off England's coast: bring out his best china and make them a nice cup of tea. Welcome to Sealand, the world’s smallest state | 60 Minutes 13:32

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