Analysis of David Block's pages 10 and 11 ....

On page 10, David Block once again indulges in sleight of hand obfuscation. You can skip over his first two paragraphs and you can even ignore the first line of his third paragraph, because his really deceptive text begins immediately afterwards.

It concerns a person called Arthur Carrington, who David Block more-or-less claims "did it all".

---

The person shown in the picture at the bottom of the page is not Arthur Carrington. It is the photograph of Swedish 'Panel Operator' Ove Sjöström. According to former Marconi engineer George Saunders, a few months after the mv Caroline moved to a new location off the Isle of Man, he was sent to the ship in order to sack this same individual.

Saunders claims that Sjöström had rendered one of the new CE transmitters useless, and that Sjöström was on his way to destroying the second one. That of course would have put the original Radio Caroline, now designated as the 'North' station, off the air! However, because it is this same textual controversy which envelopes both Sjöström and Saunders, I will spend more time examining it in depth within tomorrow's Blog. 

According to David Block, Arthur Carrington not only "installed the equipment", but this man whose picture is not shown, was also "responsible for Britain's first aerial and first undersea television transmissions. He also worked on the installation of equipment into the Manchester studios of ABC Television and has worked for the BBC, The Marconi Company [sic] and for the British Government on radar."

But David Block does not want there to be any ambiguity as to what he meant when he wrote that Arthur Carrington had "installed the equipment", because he then continued to list the "equipment" that he was referring to with these words which appear on the following page.

Generators. Block says that Carrington installed: ".... two generating sets, made by Mercedes-Benz, each capable of delivering 80 kilowatts at 220 volts (3 phase). A control panel regulates the voltage with a complicated switch gear."

Now this raises a question about the truthfulness of David Block, and the controversy involving Sjöström and Saunders which I will address tomorrow.

​Let look at the next item of "equipment" that Carrington is alleged to have installed: Transmitters and Combining Unit. It refers to ".... two transmitters and a combining unit all manufactured by American Continental Electrics [sic]. ..... The combining unit was put into operation at the end of May [1964] ...." The transmitters were manufactured in Dallas, Texas by a company called Continental Electronics, not 'American Continental Electrics'.

This technical slip seems to point to David Block not being on the ship, nor having actual documents to work from, being given second-hand notes by someone, which raises questions about the person who wrote his notes, and who he was working for when he wrote his own text?

However, irrespective of the manufacturer's name, those transmitters were installed at Rotterdam, and not at Greenore. They were already on board the mv Caroline when it first arrived in Ireland.

The next item attributed to Carrington is the aerial. Now Block contradicts himself, because he says that it was "designed and manufactured in Southampton and rigged in Cowes in the Isle of Wight." Now we know for a fact that Arthur Carrington did not design and nor did he manufacture or rig the aerial (antenna), because we know who designed it and who manufactured it, and neither party was named Arthur Carrington. Now as for "rigging" the antenna, well it could not be "rigged" before a mast was erected on the mv Caroline for the antenna to be rigged to, and the mast was erected at Greenore.

Finally this "equipment" section refers to 'Sound Control Room and Studio', and according to Sjöström, who was the Panel Operator from Sweden, some of this work was carried out by him, and his Swedish colleague.

So who is Arthur Carrington?

He is the person that David Block so conveniently identified as being the person responsible for turning the entire mv Caroline into a radio broadcasting ship.

More on this tomorrow.