Back to Arthur Carrington ....

Well, one troll who has been trying to blackmail me into revealing information before I am ready to reveal it, adopted a tactic of claiming that because I wouldn't - that he would. So I dared him to go ahead, and then this nameless troll fell silent.

I even offered to enter into a discourse with this troll, if he would simply identify himself. I made that offer several times and his response was silence. But he had one mission in mind and that was to support the theft of our work in a ridiculous book called 'The Radio Caroline Bible'.

The problem for the thief who stole our work was that he was committed to upholding a lie; the myth; the hoax, that Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline were two separate projects. The troll who cyber-stalked us supported this same ridiculous story - which becomes undone when the life and times of Arthur Carrington are revealed.

The troll kept citing events in the professional career of Arthur Carrington which dated back to circa 1951, but he could not get enough material together to join that date to 1964 when Radio Caroline went on the air for the first time. The troll and his plagiarizing thief want everyone to believe that Ronan O'Rahilly created Radio Caroline, which he did not, and that Ronan O'Rahilly hired a radio engineer named Arthur Carrington to put the station together on board the ship renamed 'Caroline'. That simply did not happen, and here's why:

The explanation is found in the first major piece of literature published in the name of Radio Caroline. It was a small booklet, and this is what it said: 

A person named David Block claims to be the author of this 8-page booklet, but David seems to be unaware that "MV" stands for "motor vessel" (as opposed to "SS" or "steamship.) The ship was not a merchant vessel but a former Danish ferry, the one implying non-human cargo and the other implying the transportation of human beings.

The picture of the person that David Block shows at the controls is not a disc jockey. In the early days Radio Caroline it only had announcers and panel operators, and that is what the person in the picture is doing.

It is not a picture of Arthur Carrington, although by reading the text above the picture you might get the impression that is at the controls. The person shown is Ove Sjöström, panel operator who was also an amateur radio enthusiast. He was not a trained radio transmitter engineer.

But because Sjöström misrepresented his credentials and almost destroyed both of the factory-fresh Continental Electronics transmitters on board the mv Caroline, George Saunders who is a qualified Marconi-BBC radio engineer, was eventually sent to the mv Caroline to sack Sjöström and repair the damage he had caused.

But what of Arthur Carrington? 

In the booklet above it implies that Carrington outfitted the mv Caroline as a radio broadcasting ship, and it also states that he "was 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 and, The Marconi Company and for the British Government on radar."

Is this true, or is David Block who wrote the text of this first Radio Caroline booklet, just making stuff up?

Let's begin with what we do know.

When the mv Caroline (ex-Iseult; ex-Fredericia), arrived at Greenore, in the Republic of Ireland, both the Continental Electronics transmitters and the electrical generator to power them, had already been installed in Rotterdam, Netherlands. That is where the Fredericia was originally berthed for about the same length of time it spent at Greenore, after it had been brought from Copenhagen, Denmark after completing its days as a passenger ferry. That being the case, the only thing to be installed was a radio studio which Ove Sjöström could accomplish.

But what about the mast and the aerial (antenna) that was installed at Greenore? Who performed that work?

The answer is Harry Spencer who was a qualified rigger based on the Isle of Wight. Spencer was at the initial group meeting before the mv Mi Amigo arrived at El Ferrol after leaving Galveston, Texas and making at least on stop at Sun Cay, in the Bahamas archipelago. Where was that meeting? At the office and studio of Allan James Crawford at 47 Dean Street, in Soho, London.

Who else was present? Captain De Jong Lanau, Chief Superintendent of the Wijsmuller Towing Company who had Ronan O'Rahilly in tow. He was the second person that Spencer met that day after being greeted by A. N. Thomas. De Jong Lanau then told Spencer to follow him back to Rotterdam where the mv Fredericia was berthed. It was Spencer's job to construct masts for both the Fredericia and mv Mi Amigo after its transatlantic voyage.

Before he left 47 Dean Street, Spencer discussed with Thomas the antenna that would be attached to what he at first thought was one mast on one ship. But Thomas did not design antennas, that was the job of his colleague, John Howard Gilman, who was not present. Both Thomas and Gilman were working for Charles and John Stanley who headed the Pye Group of companies.

This crucial meeting was documented by Harry Spencer, but even though he did not place a day and a month on that event, it had to have occurred during the first half of January 1964, because of other known contemporaneous events. So where was Arthur Carrington? He was not present.

But according to this booklet written by David Brock, the equipment that Arthur Carrington installed on the mv Caroline included  two generators; two transmitters and a combining unit; the aerial and "the sound control room and studio." But that is contradicted by both Harry Spencer and George Saunders.

We also know that Arthur Carrington was not a radio transmission engineer: he was a specialist in television cameras. But what of the other claims made in the name of Arthur Carrington, that he: ".... was 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 and, The Marconi Company and for the British Government on radar"?

Well, David Block seems to have made a lot of stuff up, because tomorrow I will tell you more about those claims, and I will also reveal the working identity of David Block.

---