Right now we are spending a lot more time building a chronological storyline, than we are on the Blog itself. Which is not to state that this daily Blog is being ignored.

The fact is, that without filling in a lot of gaps that appear within the universal knowledge base, it will be impossible to achieve any understanding of how broadcasting came to be suppressed in the British Isles.

The Masters of Propaganda have brainwashed the casual observer into thinking that British broadcasting, meaning the BBC, is by far the best service in the world.

It isn't.

It is among the most deceitful because, it is run by Masters of Deceit. They are the string-pullers of world opinion. Before the shooting and the bombing begins in any war, the propaganda pundits have been at work. They have tried to shape-up an army of hatred which is needed for its listeners and viewers to be able to take up arms and kill the enemy (meaning other human beings!)

Well the BBC was built on that mantra.

It's just that less skilled pundits of propaganda expose themselves so easily.

It's also similar to comparing a 'red top' tabloid, as they are known in Britain, with a more traditional broadsheet 'quality' newspaper. One of them is obviously out to shock and grab attention with short, sharp bursts of text and sensational pictures, and the other one offers a more sedate approach, with enough opinionated diatribe to put anyone to sleep.

Such was the BBC until the 'pirate' offshore stations such as Radio London, and certainly Radio England came along.

Radio Caroline was more of the BBC with additional time spent playing a hodge-podge of music until, well, Texan Don Pierson got his friends from the Lone Star State to drag a slice of Dallas, Texas within earshot of British listeners. Its Texan Program Director toned it down a bit to be a little less offensive, than say. Radio Atlanta had been at the start. Their Country and Western djs would have fit right in with any station broadcasting from 'Cow Town' Fort Worth ("where the West begins"), and only about 30 miles from Dallas. Then Don Pierson dragged over a screaming hodge-podge of American formats unheard of in the USA, and like a noisy and illuminating explosive firework of short duration, it shook everyone and everything related to British broadcasting into stunned disbelief.

All well and fine, but what has any of that got to do with the 'Latent Agenda' of Aodogán O'Rahilly?

Simply this:

Just as the history of Radio Caroline has been deliberately twisted out of all resemblance to what actually happened, so has the life story of Aodogán O'Rahilly, and the people who have done the twisting, are in many instances the same people!

Now you ask, what on earth are we suggesting?

Well, Aodogán O'Rahilly was born in England, and for all purposes of documentation, that makes him an Englishman by birth. He married an American citizen and his infamous son Ronan was therefore half-English and half-American.

Well, wasn't Ireland an independent  country?

Yes and no.

It wasn't independent when Aodogán O'Rahilly was born near Brighton, England, and it was still a member of the British Commonwealth when he began his tile manufacturing company called Weatherwell Ltd.

Yes, Aodogán O'Rahilly did create his company on the island of Ireland, but when he formed it, the island was in the aftermath of the failed 'Rising' of 1916, which eventually resulted in a nation called the Irish Free State, which was sort of like the status of the Isle of Man today. Back then, Ireland's external affairs were all controlled by politicians in London.

​So when did Ireland become a truly free country (excluding those hive-off British northern counties called Northern Ireland)?

For that we have to move the clock up into the Nineteen Thirties, but to find the Ireland in the south that we know today, well the clock has to advance past the years of World War II.

Just throwing out references to an obscure and derelict port at Greenore in order to identify where the Radio Caroline ship was made ready for broadcasting, and without identifying who did that work, and why they did that work, is to totally "miss the boat" of understanding what happened from the time that the ship ceased to be a Danish ferry, and the time it arrived at Greenore, as if by accident, since it was originally bound for the Isle of Wight!

This is one major reason why you should follow the editorial editions (and corrections) to our Timetable.

​See the link at the top-right of this page.

Rather than spend  a lot of duplicated effort and time on accounting for the establishment and development of Weatherwell Ltd, and related activities managed by Aodogán O'Rahilly, we will enter them into the Timeline (see page link top right), and then, where necessary, expand upon certain events within this daily Blog.

​There also several other pages attached to this Blog site, and we suggest that you become familiar with them in order to comprehend the total extent of our process in unraveling the fables surrounding the creation and life of Radio Caroline which first went on the air in 1964; ended its legal life in 1967, and then limped off to fade away the following Spring.

The Timeline will be continuously updated with additional information.

Because this Blog is a work in progress and part of a huge editorial undertaking, its editing process goes through many steps which continue after publication. We constantly notice typos that have been on line for some time, but which have never come to our attention until we see them and correct them. If you notice a typo or even a poorly constructed sentence that is not clear and to the point, please bring these issues to our attention via the comment forum. We need specific identification regarding page location; the paragraph on that page, and the line number within that paragraph to avoid a time-wasting exercise. Tell us where the error is; what the error is, and what is either missing from the sentence or what should be added to the sentence. Thank you for your help.

As part of our ongoing editing process, we have made both a typographical correction and reworded a paragraph in the masthead that directly relates to Ronan O'Rahilly. It now reads:

".... Ronan O'Rahilly not only directed attention to himself, he also obfuscated the fact that his father was born in England; married an American citizen and was struggling to develop a manufacturing and export business which required official UK governmental cooperation. At the same time, Ronan O'Rahilly allowed the press to falsely wrap him in he legacy of his journalist grandfather who in 1916 had played a part in the aborted Irish 'Rising' against the British Crown."

This correction was made because due to repeated tweaking, the text stated that his grandfather was born in England, when its original source text stated this father was born in England. While his father later spent time resurrecting the legacy of his own father, Ronan's grandfather, Ronan's father was by no means a rebel of the first order in fighting the British. However, this is not to say that his father was supportive of the British Crown keeping a toe hold on the island of Ireland. He was not.

Ronan's father grew up with a brother who took up the mantle of 'The O'Rahilly' for his own use in courts of law, which is where he appeared before the bench as a barrister. He was also a Nazi sympathizer, in as much that he followed the premise that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Since his enemy, like his eponymous grandfather was the British Crown, and their enemy was now Adolph Hitler's Germany. So, Ronan's uncle saw friendship and common cause in the ambitious dreams of the Nazi state which was dominated by Adolph Hitler. In other words, if Hitler could invade and then conquer the United Kingdom, then all of Ireland might be reunited as one nation, since Eire had adopted the position of neutrality during World War II and therefore Ireland might be rewarded for its surface passivity. Of course Adolph died along with his Thousand Year Reich, and with it died the hopes of Ronan's uncle.

Meanwhile Aodogán O'Rahilly, who was Ronan's father, was still trying to run his roofing tile business called Weatherwell Ltd., that he began prior to WWII. To understand what happened at Greenore concerning the two radio ships, it is first necessary to understand who owned the properties that adjoined the quay, and how they came to own them. It is also necessary to understand what the quay represented concerning a port facility, and who owned it.

Unfortunately, the 'Steve Martin' approach of "first get a radio broadcasting ship named 'Caroline'," has been the approach used first by most of the press, and then by the troll worshipers of their Messiah, Ronan O'Rahilly. But just like Steve Martin's original routine about the acquisition of a "million dollars", we want to know about the acquisition of a radio broadcasting ship named 'Caroline', because "the devil is in the detail"!

The facts of the matter are that neither the reported acquisition process of the radio broadcasting ship as claimed by the troll-anoraks is true, and neither is the history of the so-called "private port" of Greenore! Let's clear up one basic issue. To have a Port capable of exporting and importing people and goods from one nation to another nation requires a governmental Customs Service. They approve or disapprove any specific export or import business, and they all also collect government taxes for their trouble. In the instance of Greenore during the O'Rahilly years, more emphasis was placed upon exporting than importing, and the two radio broadcasting ships arrived at a time when Greenore was clothed in a blanket of neglect and occasional chartered usage within a limited circle of people. Some of their activities resulted in questions being raised in the British House of Commons about smuggling into the UK via Northern Ireland.

Starting tomorrow we will begin to reveal what we now know about the business activities of Aodogán O'Rahilly with regards to Weatherwell Limited and the properties at Greenore.

A caveat: Around the middle of 2019, Paul Rusling visited our new library facility, and then, after announcing that he found serious books and research "too boring" to become a part of his own interests, he then bolted with material he had received free of charge from our research newsletter, and then rushed into self-print with a book which he calls 'The Radio Caroline bible'.

George Saunders saw a copy of the book before we did, and he noted that Rusling has in many instances just lifted information from our research newsletter, and then published it. In some instances noted George, Rusling even reprinted some of our own typos!

Much of what he stole (he then charged others for our material), was in the original form of hypothetical trial balloons, where we were trying to discover how the story really comes together. Rusling stole the hypothetical questions and restated them as fact!

Now some of what he stole does check out, but what he stole also clashes with the troll press because it is not what the other members of that cult had come to believe from other books and articles and programs. However, in order to conceal or paper-over the missing gaps, Rusling then created another story using Oonagh Leigh, who he refers to as Oonagh Huggard.

In some instances Rusling also had to dust-off the ridiculous story about a 'Jimmy Ross', and then, without any proof, or means to establish a tired-old myth about a 'Jimmy Ross', Rusling admitted that while Ian Cowper Ross' father's legal first name is Charles, everyone called him 'Jimmy'. Now that is even an exaggeration of Ronan's blarney, or to be more precise Ian Cowper Ross' novel called 'Rocking the Boat', because not even Ian claimed that.

Ian merely inferred in his novel that Ronan had called his father by that name, but then he did not even identify Ronan under his real name, and neither did Ian identify himself under his real name! But there it is, on page 51 of the ever-changing pagination of Rusling's print-on-demand book (Rusling demands and the printer then prints), here is Rusling claiming that: "While Ross senior's Christian name was Charles, many of his close friends and colleagues knew him simply as 'Jimmy'." ​

Now for a moment, leaving aside questions as to whether Ian's father was or was not a member of any faith (Americans refer to a first name, because there is no State church in the USA, and for that matter there are many non-Christian religions in the UK), but Rusling tells his readers that Ross senior's name WAS Charles. So does Rusling mean that Charles Ross changed his name?

Ian, who called himself Paul Shaw in his novel, only had Liam O'Mahoney (who some then claim is Ronan O'Rahilly), call Ian's father (or we should say, Paul Shaw's father), by the name 'Jimmy'. So how does the fictitious 'Paul Shaw' refer to his father? He calls him either 'Daddy' or 'my father'!

So where does this Rusling rubbish come from?

The answer is out of Rusling's own head! Remember 'Jimmy Ross' was the creation of Ian Cowper Ross and it was first introduced by Ian Cowper Ross to deflect press inquiries, but it was not until 1990 that a more detailed and fleshed-out version of this myth was published as a novel by William Heinemann Ltd.

The reason for bringing this to your attention again, is because if you were unfortunate enough to be conned into buying Rusling's rubbish, and if you then read references to similar subject material here, remember that the reason why we are being so methodical, is because of the harm created by fraudsters like Rusling.

You be the judge.

We have the proof of his theft and his responses when he was found out. The trolls who he has surrounded himself with just huff and puff.

We also have, and will provide you with, the documented sources relating to the real story, and it is all free of charge to you!

At the moment we are also adding information to the Timeline on a daily basis. If you want to see events in sequential form, please check out the Timeline using the link at the top right of this page.

In yesterday's Blog, we reported how the public relations firm of Leslie Perrin and Associates had been hired to conceal the true origins of Radio Caroline, by publishing misinformation which relied upon the magician's trick of misdirection. The audience was told what to observe, and what they observed was misinformation. Consequently, because their intake of information was false, the actual event being witnessed by them at the time was false, and to subsequent analysis years later, it does not make sense.

It was magic!

Over the years this same trick involving misdirection has been expanded to the point that late last year, it was repackaged by its author and self-publisher as a 'bible' in order to hoodwink a quasi-religious cult which claims Ronan O'Rahilly as its 'messiah'. Their religion depends upon a theology of multiple lives to the point where anything calling itself 'Radio Caroline' is a part of a sort of quasi-Holy Spirit representing eternal life. One troll even posts the claim on his submissions to an Online forum: ".... There are a few FOOLS that think Caroline, will soon be over.... They will be forever - WRONG."

Radio Caroline was a station that broadcast between 1964 and 1967 and limped off the air at the beginning of 1968. Other people came along and used the same name. But the original station was lethally injected on August 14, 1967, and then died on March 3, 1968, and consequently all other uses of that name are unrelated to the original version, which is what we are analyzing on this Blog.

Because this Blog is following academic standard guidelines and the same methodology used in a court of law where foundations must be laid for the introduction of new evidence, several of our Blog editions have been quite lengthy, and to a casual observer, somewhat tedious to read. This in turn has even prompted calls to "get on with it". But we can't do that if we are to stay within the boundary lines of academic and court room guidelines relating to the introduction of new evidence.

So yesterday, as was to be expected, a leader of the brainwashed religious cult of 'Caroline' trolls popped up, and, without making any comments whatsoever about the evidence presented so far, wanted to know whether we have talked to Ronan O'Rahilly or any member of the O'Rahilly family. We replied that we have not. For the troll, that was proof that we did not have anything worthy of knowing about, and even if we did, so what? It was all long ago and far away and no one cares. That is, except for the trolls and the publisher of their 'bible'. The trolls feel that the past is a settled matter, even if it is settled on misinformation.

This work is an analysis of claimed existing events, and not the pronouncement of something that no one has ever heard about. In brief, we want to know, is whether what we have all been told by Ronan O'Rahilly himself, is true, or is it false? In other words, it is in one sense the personal testimony of Ronan O'Rahilly that is on trial in this Blog! The fact of the matter is that Ronan O'Rahilly left behind many audio, video and print depositions of his testimony which he freely gave and while not under any form of duress.

Those words of his are now on trial!

You the readers are the jury, and you are the ones who will decide:

Was Ronan O'Rahilly guilty of deception; or not guilty of deception?

As readers are probably aware, Ronan O'Rahilly recently died of a form of dementia, and at his memorial Mass, the priest conducting it was handed a script to read. Which he did, and out loud, and on a televised event. But they were scripted words that constituted fraudulent claims by and about the life and times of Ronan O'Rahilly. He took his own lies with him to his grave with the blessings of that priest, and in the Church with a faith to which Ronan himself rarely showed any connection. In other words Ronan was a con man to the end of his days on Earth.

Ronan O'Rahilly is the son of Aodogán O'Rahilly who is also now deceased, but Ronan's father left behind a wealth of information, which over the years was reported in a variety of contemporary publications. That information today stands as a testimony to the life and times of Aodogán O'Rahilly, and to the life and times of Ronan O'Rahilly where it interacts with events involving his father. In the majority of instances, we believe these reports to be true, unlike the claims involving his son.

What we now know is that the former Danish ferry called mv Fredericia was obtained from DFDS by the Dutch firm of Wijsmuller. It was first taken to a dock in Rotterdam where it remained for 44 days, which is a longer period of time than the vessel spent at Greenore, Eire.

Because the events at Rotterdam and Greenore have simply been skipped over and never analyzed in depth before this Blog was created, that is one of the tasks that is being undertaken right here, right now. One reason is that claims have been made about the history of the property at Greenore where the mv Fredericia was taken, and those claims which were made to support the mythology surrounding Radio Caroline, it will be revealed in this Blog that those claims are bogus.

Then there is the apparent mystery of why the Fredericia was briefly renamed 'Iseult', before being renamed again as 'Caroline'. Regarding the reason for the latter name, a wealth of misinformation was created around the Spring of 1965, to falsely claim a linkage to the 5 years old daughter of President John F. Kennedy. He was murdered in 1963 at Dallas, Texas.

In fact, a lot of the key events surrounding Radio Caroline in the early days, link to events in Europe and several locations in Texas, USA. But when these events took place, neither the Internet, not the World Wide Web or related Search Engines, were in existence. Consequently, past editions of books; magazines, and especially newspapers, were not readily available to anyone at anytime, any where in the world. Source documentation was bound-up, and either placed upon dusty library shelves accessed by card index files at local libraries; or on microfilm which required access to a microfilm index; the microfilms, and special machines upon which to view them. Getting printed copies of those microfilms involved yet another process. It was all very time consuming and expensive.

Those conditions were made for a liar's paradise, and they provided a con man's tool-in-trade. Because getting information to refute claims made; especially if they were about events that were not recent and had taken place in another country; it often made the process of debunking the liars with proof, downright impossible.

All of that has changed now, and that is due to both modern technology and our team of investigators who straddle the formerly geographical divide between Europe and the USA, with an emphasis on the State of Texas. In the 1980s we did come to the personal attention of Ronan O'Rahilly who demanded to know who we were, and why we were snooping into his background of claims. At the time, two individuals connected with a new 'Caroline' organization in the UK and unrelated to the original Radio Caroline, had asked for our help with research in the USA. We assisted them, as well as Radio Netherlands concerning a related inquiry.

Tomorrow we will continue with an account of our foray into the clashing misinformation promoted by Ronan O'Rahilly, as it collided with the factual account of the life of his father.

The story of Ronan O'Rahilly's life has been obscured both by the anorak trolls who got hold of it, which was long after the events took place, and by the release of a deluge of misinformation by a public relations firm about the birth of Radio Caroline. This has allowed these trolls with the opportunity to simply take the nonsense thrown at them in the press by David Block, who did so on behalf of his boss Leslie Perrin. This same misinformation which found its way into print, was then accepted as the 'Gospel of Ronan'. Late last year it was even turned into the bedrock of a kind of religious cult by the publication of a book that was promoted as a "bible".

But to understand the life and times of Ronan O'Rahilly it is first necessary to understand the life and times of his father Aodogán O'Rahilly. It was not just the biological life of Ronan O'Rahilly that began with his father's hormonal motivations, but it is also where Ronan's career path began. It was then heavily influenced by his father into the time period when 'Radio Caroline' first appeared as a name in print, and was later uttered on air.

So who was Aodogán O'Rahilly, and what does his life tell us about that of his son and the birth of Radio Caroline? The answers to those questions will be partially found in this continuing Blog as we begin a new theme. We do not claim for a moment that it is the entire story, because this story has been deliberately obscured - until now.

What we have been able to piece together are the fragments that have surfaced, but which it seems, you were not supposed to ever read in context. Thanks to the development of the Internet; its search engines, and both governmental; commercial, and many web sites created by individuals which are supported by documentation, enough of this material has now bubbled to the surface for us to share with you.

Our trek into Aodogán's Latent Agenda, begins tomorrow.

Our next themed series in this Blog will be 'Aodogán's Latent Agenda, but in view of the fact that the last two updates to this Blog were quite lengthy, we have taken a break in order to give readers time to digest this new material.

In the meantime, we have updated the Timeline (see link top right), and the Radio-Noir site (see link above on this masthead). It now includes the last two updates on this Blog, but as Chapters. At the moment they are merely a part of a manuscript in progress. It will gradually morph its way into a book format. This will be separate from 'Dial 999 for Caroline', but complimentary to that text.

As we previously pointed out with reference to the Steve Martin comedy routine of 'You can be a Millionaire, and never pay taxes'; the anorak writers make a statement but they don't back it up. They simply move on to another issue which they then explain in great detail, so that their audience forgets their first statement.

Put simply, this is how it works:

Most people would like to be millionaires, and some people would do their best, after becoming  millionaires, not to pay taxes.

Steve Martin explained it this way: "First get a million dollars" (or pounds or whatever.) Then Steve answers a question about paying taxes, and he does so in detail. But what about his first point, the most important one: how do you get that million dollars to begin with?

He avoids having to provide the answer.

This is how anorak publications work.

They tell you that Ronan O'Rahilly showed up in London and that he eventually told Allan James Crawford that he had a wealthy father who might invest in his offshore radio station, and that his father owned a private port at Greenore in Ireland.

Then we hear about two ships being outfitted there and that one of them belonged to Ronan who double-crossed Allan and stole his anchorage off Essex. But we really have to wait until we are told that there was a 'merger' to get into a lot of detail about the operation - after it has relocated to 6 Chestefield Gardens.

All of sudden this is Ronan's project because he has devoured Allan's venture which has run out of money.

But is any of that true?

The answer is NO!

To discover what is true and what is false we have to carefully examine all statements and go to other sources to see if they can be verified.

So far, as part of this discovery, we know for a fact that Ronan O'Rahilly went to Houston, Texas where he met Captain De Jong Lanau of Wijsmuller.

We know that during the last three days of December 1963, first the mv Mi Amigo secretly slipped out of port at Galveston island, Texas; then the next day, Wijsmuller brought the mv Fredericia from Copenhagen, Denmark to Rotterdam, Holland.

During that period of time, which was two days before the end of the year 1963, Lloyd's had recorded ownership of the mv Mi Amigo as belonging to business interests connected to Gordon McLendon, and noted its Panamanian connection. For the same time period, and on the very next day, DFDS record a sale that mentions both a company name and Ronan's name and his sister's name, all in connection with the purchase of the mv Fredericia.

Harry Spencer had written a personal account of how he became involved with Allan James Crawford. He also recorded his first meeting at 47 Dean Street where he noted that Alfred Nicholas Thomas was there; Captain De Jong was there, and Ronan O'Rahllly was there.
 
Harry tells us that De Jong had charge of both ships and that Harry had to bid to get the job of installing masts on both of them.

We know that the mv Fredericia spent more time in Rotterdam after being purchased, than it did at Greenore, and we also know from Harry that he was originally going to work on the mv Fredericia in the vicinity of the Isle of Wight where his business was located. But, at the last moment, the ship was redirected to Greenore, Eire.

Harry Spencer went to Greenore, not just to work on the Fredericia, but on the Mi Amigo as well, but it had not yet arrived at Greenore, while the Fredericia was already tied up at the quay when Harry arrived.

In the sparse reference to work performed, Harry Spencer tells us that he sub-contracted work to the Dundalk Engineering Works who supplied their employees who were skilled in various trades. Harry tells us that when the owners of Dundalk Engineering Works discovered the real purpose behind the ships being there, they forbade their employees to work on the ships. So Harry turned to a Roman Catholic priest who intervened and got Dundalk Engineering Works management to lift its ban.

Nowhere does Harry refer to Ronan O'Rahilly being there - except one time. That is when Harry says that he went to Dublin to Ronan's home. Ronan's father was so angry and hostile with Harry Spencer that he would not even look at him, and that he only spoke to him via Ronan. It is clear that the issue which ticked-off Dundalk Engineering Works was the same issue that ticked off Ronan's father.

Both had been conned as to the real reason why the ships had been brought to Greenore!

So who conned them?

Ronan O'Rahilly!

What transpires from the account by Harry Spencer is the absence of any mention regarding the presence of Ove Sjöström or Arthur Carrington, or anyone else. Harry does not even mention George Saunders, even though Harry worked on the mv Mi Amigo, but that could also be because George was there for such a short time. Maybe a couple of days over a weekend, because it looks like he was still employed by Marconi.

Now George does place John Howard Gilman at Greenore, because he drove George there from the railway station at Dundalk. George also places Alfred Nicholas Thomas there, because he is the man who gave George his job after an interview on board the mv Mi Amigo at Greenore.

But nobody mentions either Ove Sjöström or the Marconi TV camera salesman Arthur Carrington.

But what else did George Saunders tell OEM in an interview on January 5, 2014?

Well he confirmed that Harry Spencer had told him about meeting Ronan's dad who was downright rude and hostile towards Harry Spencer! That is second hand information but it stuck in George's mind, and George never met Ronan's father in Dublin; Greenore, or anywhere else, from what can be gathered.

George was not an inquisitive fellow. We asked him when he was at 6 Chesterfield Gardens if he ever explored what was on other floors. He said that he had not.

OEM asked him if he ever went to 47 Dean Street. George replied that he had not.

George did tell OEM about his journey to Greenore, especially the drive with John Howard Gilman from Dundalk railway station.

George also noted on his arrival at Greenore that ".... it had been an old railway terminal and a very large hotel was there, I remember it was quite a big building, probably about three storeys (sic) high. It was sort of very lightly used, a lot of it was just empty. But obviously things were going on. When we parked the car, I saw two ships, one looked like a ship and it was large. He said 'Oh that’s not ours'.  I said Oh, so we marched along the quay and there was a small ship like a coaster and he said 'this is ours'."

From this account by George Saunders we know that both the mv Fredericia and the mv Mi Amigo were still at the Greenore quayside when George arrived. This also helps us to narrow-down dates, since we know when the mv Fredericia left Greenore.

We also know that when George went on board the mv Mi Amigo that Harry Spencer and the Dundalk Engineering Works had not yet constructed a new mast and antenna - which was designed by John Howard Gilman who had also designed the one installed on the mv Fredericia. Said George in the OEM interview: "They said 'when we need quite a bit of work doing yet, it’s not ready to go. This ship has been on the air previously but the aerial has to be rigged'. So I said OK."

Then George added his own mystery man: "A couple of days later, I was joined by another chap, the name fails me,  I can see the face, gosh a chap called Grays no the name’s gone but he joined about two days after me and under John Gilman’s guidance, we did various things to getting it all set up."

George was in Greenore for a very short time and he went there for an interview so his observations have to be understood in that context. He said to OEM about Greenore: "Now what was interesting what else was going on there you see because this other ship which was Caroline - she had never been a radio ship before and they had absolutely nothing to do with ours, they didn’t want to deal with ours. They were quite hostile to us really. When I walked round here I realized there’s a lot going on at Greenore and we were almost like intruders, if you know what I mean."

The hostility was undoubtedly related to an outsider asking nosy questions, and to the deception that caused Dundalk Engineering Works to pull its men off the job, and for Ronan's father to then send for Harry and speak to him via Ronan without looking at Harry.

George added: "(O)bviously things were going on in Greenore that we were not part of. It was used by Ronan O’Rahilly’s father as a base, he actually owned it." So clearly George had no idea of who owned the Greenore facility because it was not Ronan's father!

George did note that: "This place had been like the equivalent of a cross channel ferry terminal. The train would come in, you could then cross from the train undercover to board the steamer. That was the idea. This was all built about 1880 something like that maybe a bit earlier and most of it was still there. The trains hadn’t come there for years. But what was creepy about it what they had all the railway notices were up, still."

​George then stated something he had been told: "Ronan O’Rahilly’s father had a couple of coasters and they came in with coasting cargo they picked up from other ports in Ireland, to be transported somewhere else, that was none of my business. Ronan’s father owned a couple of ships certainly.  And of course they had priority over everything. Now an interesting thing was that apparently the border between North and South Ireland ran straight down through the middle of Carlingford Lough, so when you looked across at the other side that was Northern Ireland, that was British and of course we were on Republican side quite interesting."

But the fact of the matter is that at the time that George Saunders was in Greenore, Ronan's father did not own any ships. But was circulating, was a story which even made its way into the House of Commons, that Greenore was being used to smuggle items like cigarettes in order to avoid H.M. Customs Duty fees.

OEM also asked George Saunders how Thomas and Gilman became involved, but George had no direct knowledge. He was totally unaware, until we pointed it out to him, that a BBC staff obituary notice stated that Thomas had left the BBC to work for Pye, and yet, George was the one who supplied us with the obituary notice!

George was asked by OEM if Allan James Crawford ever went to Greenore, Eire, and he replied: "No, he didn't, I never saw him there." However, Crawford says on film that he did go to visit Ronan's father, but he doesn't say when that was. Remember, Ronan's father lived some distance away near Dublin, and we don't know why he really went to see him. Was it a last minute visit by this Australian to get permission to use the quay at Greenore, after Pye had been tipped-off not to send the two ships to the Isle of Wight where the GPO would raid them? It can't have been anything to with offshore 'pirate' radio broadcasting, because clearly that was a shock surprise to Dundalk Engineering Works (DEW) who were in close contact with Aodogán O'Rahilly, and initially, neither he nor DEW had any real knowledge about what Harry Spencer was really doing at Greenore!

But this secrecy and the actions of DEW employees would later cause problems for George Saunders, as he explained to OEM:

"When Caroline eventually went round to be Caroline North, I actually had to go onboard her and sort out the mess that they had made at Greenore, and you know it wasn’t pretty. If they had spoken to us, we could have helped them a great deal and would have been willing to but they thought they knew it all.  And it really was a problem. It was dangerous really what they had done."

Who is this "they" that George Saunders refers to? He thought it was Ove Sjöström who made matters worse by bragging that he had worked on the mv Fredericia at Greenore. But this seems to be a lie, because it looks as if Ove Sjöström was never at Greenore!

He certainly did not do the work complained of by George Saunders, because that was performed by DEW, and it looks like sabotage; or revenge because Harry Spencer had forced DEW to send its employees back to work by using a Roman Catholic priest to do it, and the priests in those days carried a lot of political, commercial and religious weighted authority in Eire!

His next comment makes no sense at all, because he speaks of going on board mv Mi Amigo which had been known as mv Bon Jour off Sweden and home of Radio Nord where Ove Sjöström had previously worked. But we do not think that Ove Sjöström was ever at Greenore, at least not to work on the mv Fredericia. However, George told OEM:

"When I went on her, they had a Swedish chap Ove Sjöström, and he had been at Greenore on Radio Nord, but when I went on Caroline off the Isle of Man, I realised that his knowledge of the transmitter engineering, the power side of it must have been quite limited. The studio voltage should be 115 volts, it was all American equipment, instead it was about 135. It had never occurred to him why this should be, because things were burning out. This is a serious problem. It didn’t occur to him to try and find out why and then try and do something about it."

The problem George was referring to, was the result of work performed under duress by employees of DEW, not by Ove Sjöström. Yet George said: "He told me that one of the contacts in the transmitters, the high voltage protection relay actually had burned out and he had another solenoid made, and the makers couldn’t make him another solenoid, for that it was too badly damaged. He had been raiding the other transmitter for all the bits to keep T2 going. So we had almost a shell which was T1, but lots of bits missing, which he had been taking across just to keep T2 going. I thought this was totally unprofessional."

George told us that it was Tom Lodge who came up to him while George was on the mv Caroline, ex-Fredericia: "One of the DJ’s told me, you see these great big feeders running along the passageway, these are like cables about 3” diameter. He said one of those had glowed red, when Ove had done something or other. I said thank you very, very much, because that means it’s ruined."

Then George told OEM: "So I wrote an account of everything that had happened onboard and sent it off to John Gillman who promptly came out to the Isle of Man, and I had the job of sacking Sjöström, which I did. Gilman then said 'I’m afraid you’ll have to stay on for about five weeks, while I recruit more engineers'.  So Trevor Grantham, Frank Kemble and an Austrian Reisenhofer joined us."

Clearly John Howard Gilman who had been reporting to Alfred Nicholas Thomas was in charge of the engineering on both ships. So what happened to Arthur Carrington? Well of course his name was dropped in to create the impression that there were two projects, and even though Atlanta was now Caroline South, it is clear that Gilman was reporting to Crawford!

George was asked by OEM if he knew where the mv Fredericia was going after it left Greenore: "We knew exactly what they were going to do, they were going to go skedaddle down the Irish Sea, down the Irish channel and make to our station, which is more or less what they did. They then came on air before us."

It is also clear that prior to Saunders leaving Marconi and going to work for Radio Atlanta on board the mv Mi Amigo, that the two Texans who were broadcasting from the ship on the same wavelength as Radio Caroline after it closed down for the evening, were reporting to Milan Leggett. He was the Texan engineer sent over by Bill Weaver on behalf of Gordon McLendon when the ship left Galveston. The other person named by Crawford who was responsible for the broadcast engineering side on the mv Mi Amigo, prior to the arrival of George Saunders on board, was Alfred Nicholas Thomas!

How do we know this for a fact?

Because Allan James Crawford wrote a note to that effect!

In other words George Saunders had not yet left Marconi, meaning that George Saunders was not there! Exactly when George Saunders left Marconi and joined Radio Atlanta is something we are trying to determine. Only then will we know what George knew for a fact and what he was told by someone else! Here is an example of his dubious reporting:

"Now they broadcast 6am to 6pm so after a couple of days when we arrived there, we tested on 1546/8, which wasn’t a channel. But this is the crystal we’d been given by Continental and it was actually the frequency which our transmitters were tuned to, so away we went. Our first programme from first transmission from Radio Atlanta was actually a tape of French music and was linked together by the wife of Toni Gomeche, and she had been educated at the Sorbonne and this tape was absolutely beautiful, it really was nice and it ended with La Mer. At the end of that everybody on shore then knew that we were ready to go when we had the right crystal."

George's prejudicial judgment shows up in this next item by him in talking to OEM:

"Now Caroline, they were broadcasting from 6am to 6pm and eventually they bought one of our crystals across to us so we actually started testing then as Radio Atlanta, when they closed down on the same frequency. We had a pair of Texas DJ’s on board, now actually they were father and son and they were both highly extrovert, both fat, overfed, absolutely screamers, they really were. They hadn’t been very long and they were told to calm down."

This is the old stereotype of Americans that began with World War II. From the pictures seen it is difficult to assess the son as "fat" and "overfed". They were not "screamers", in fact, the father while he may have been overweight, was not exactly an "extrovert", but more representative of a typical Texan who broadcast on a Country and Western format station. By English standards, or at least by George Saunders standards who believes in 'Queen and Country' (meaning England); he would label Charlie Drake as an extrovert displaying improper behavior for an Englishman. In other words, George's comments are totally subjective and may be based upon hearsay alone.

George Saunders said to OEM: "Then we eventually got ourselves more organised in London and of course we were a tape operation like Radio Veronica and were using Brightlingsea as the Port. Now the problem was Brightlingsea was tidal and it wasn’t a customs port, so everytime we wanted to go out to the ship, we had to get customs clearance. They had to come down to Brightlinsea and of course they didn’t like it and also of course they charged."

Now keep in mind that the programs for Radio Atlanta that were on tape, all came from 47 Dean Street, and George has admitted that he never went there! This is where George starts to fudge about how long he was at Greenore, because he went there for an interview to get a job which he did not have, and the job he did have was at Marconi where he told us that he had to give notice before he left. Yet this is the woolly information that George provided OEM, when we know that he cannot have been at Greenore for much more than one weekend!

"Now when the ship left Greenore, we had on board a Granada film team. I got a feeling I left the ship actually then. I didn’t go down the Irish Sea, but they did and apparently they had a hell of a time and the ship had to come into Falmouth as one of the stays broke and it says much for it that all the aerial remained upright. But she headed to Falmouth for emergency repairs. The Granada film team apparently crept ashore and hadn’t shot an inch of film - they’d all been horribly seasick so that was the end of that."

​​What we learn here is an admission by George Saunders that he had gone to Greenore for a job interview, and that he left Greenore before the mv Mi Amigo departed from Greenore, which was after the mv Fredericia had already left.

We think that George arrived on or near to March 13, 1964, and departed before March 27, 1964 when the mv Fredericia left Greenore.

"I know I joined her at Brightlingsea because I was living in Essex so it wasn’t far from here at all. Brightlingsea was a branch line from Colchester. Not long after Atlanta had opened, Dr Beeching decided to close the branch line, so that made life a bit more awkward. So there was every reason for us to move to Parkeston Quay to Harwich and that was a much better station."

But George refers to two other items of interest concerning the real timeline of events. We will address the second one first, and that is what appears to be a hurried departure from Greenore by the mv Mi Amigo. Was it ejected? Had DEW finished their work or bodged this job as well as the transmitters? Was Harry Spencer thrown out of Greenore, along with the second ship? Is that why the mv Mi Amigo had to put into Falmouth on April 21, 1964 for emergency repairs?

Now let's look again at the first item concerning that Granada film team. Granada did shoot film around the Greenore area, and that was after the mv Fredericia had departed, because only the mv Mi Amigio was there at the time. A news report in the 'Daily Telegraph' on April 2, 1964, noted that the men working on the mv Mi Amigo were not local to Greenore, and no one was talking about what they were doing. But the Granada film crew production that was transmitted as part of the 'World in Action' series on May 12, 1964, seems to have angered people at Greenore because it portrayed  them in a bad light by comparing them with pirates of old.
​
George admits that there was a gap between the time he was at Greenore and the time he left Marconi to join Radio Atlanta. Remember, we asked George if he ever went to 47 Dean Street, and he replied: "No I never went, never visited it."

He was also asked if he ever went to 6 Chesterfield Gardens, which was given the name of 'Caroline House': "Ah now, after the merger, I was on the ship when the merger took place. Caroline House then moved to 6 Chesterfield Gardens and obviously I went there. On my fourth night ashore, I deputed for John Gilman in Caroline House London as chief radio engineer. That actually was very useful because it gave me an insight into what was going on, all over the place. It was time well spent as far as I was concerned."

But George admitted that he never toured 6 Chesterfield Gardens, and he confined himself to the area where Gilman had his office. So George did not gain any insight into what was going on, and this is obvious from his lack of basic first-hand knowledge about who and what was behind the Radio Caroline operation where there was no "merger" as such.

When George later terminated his employment with the Caroline organization, he soon realized that he had no idea who had really employed him, or who he had been really working for!

"Now, when I left them, jumping ahead quite a bit, my new employers wanted a reference, so I wrote to Caroline and explained what I wanted. So eventually after a couple of days an envelope plopped through my door and I opened it and it was a reference I wanted. But it was from a firm I‘d never heard of, Hanicon Investments Inc Panama, European Agency Offshore Tender & Supply Company Baarn Holland. Now the offshore Tender and Supply Co was in turn an offshoot of Wijsmuller Company, the big Dutch towage. So I think that’s who we were."

George was asked if he knew who owned the two ships:

"I think after the merger, the Dutch owned the ships and then if you then think forward a bit more, when Caroline eventually closed down in 1968, they were seized by the two Dutch tugs. I think this is just the case that the Dutch decided that there were unpaid bills and they’d had enough and they were going to call in the investment.  Now I appreciate this might not be a popular view for some people but I think that’s actually what happened."

So a lot of what George Saunders thought that he knew about Radio Atlanta and Radio Caroline, he really didn't know at all, and this led to him blaming Ove for something that Ove clearly did not do. Whether Ove should have been sacked because he was incapable of performing the job of Chief Engineer, well that is another matter.

It all boils down to too many inflated egos all puffing themselves up in the same way that Johnnie Walker did when talking about Don Pierson, and none of them had a clue as to what the real story was, or is.

We do, and we will reveal more tomorrow by taking a detailed look at the life of Aodogán O'Rahilly. You will then begin to understand why Ronan O'Rahilly showed up in London and what he was really trying to accomplish. It isn't what you think!

Something that the trolls and anoraks and sloppy historians fail to take notice of is the fact that the mv Fredericia was in Rotterdam for a longer period of time than it was at Greenore.

Why?

What took place at Rotterdam after the ship was taken there by Wijsmuller?

We know!

For a long time no one seemed to know where the information came from about the mv Fredericia being bought by Cross Channel Container Services Limited, or why there is a note of a name change to Iseult, which seems to be fleeting.

We contacted a lot of the leading authorities who have taken an interest in this ship, and we finally tracked down the source to an encyclopedia published by DFDS (Det Forenede Dampskibs Selskab which translates as The United Steamship Company). See the spine illustration above in the masthead. It also shows the ship before it was converted into the home of a floating radio station.

So who owned Cross Channel Container Services Limited, and when was it registered. The DFDS listing shows Ronan O'Rahilly was the owner, but that information came from the kind of handout misinformation that found its way into 'Lloyd's Registry of Shipping', which we discovered is a most unreliable source of information - because Lloyd's did not perform their own research: they just accepted handouts from self-identified ship owners!

We don't accept anything just because someone else says that it is true.

Quite often claims made are either a downright lie, or there is a modicum of truth surrounded by an avalanche of untruth!

In forthcoming editions we will not only peel back Cross Channel Container Services Limited, but we will also reveal the best account of the life of Ronan O'Rahilly that is available to explain a reason why he showed up in London. He said that he wanted to escape from his father's business, but did he? Was he in London to try to assist his father's business?

We will review his real motives and what he was really up to.

Oh, yes, Ronan had a motive for arriving in London and it had nothing to do with music or offshore radio!

In the next edition we will wrap up our current theme called 'Sabotage from Dundalk', and that we will do it with the account of George Saunders.

It will be another lengthy edition, which is why we postponed it today!