The original published story about the creation of Radio Caroline was the work of David Block. He was employed by the public relations firm of Leslie Perrin and Associates, and Perrin was one of the biggest names in  the UK, where he concentrated upon public relations for artists and companies connected to show business.

Perrin would not been commissioned by some fly-by-night operation, because Perrin had carefully built an international reputation so that in the UK he could represent the most famous names in show business.

Just after WWII, Leslie Perrin began building his music and club connections while working for Melody Maker, and when the original Musical Express was about to go out of business in 1952, a new owner stepped in and Perrin joined their new team of four news reporters. The New Musical Express became a trend  setter in the UK, because it was the first music tabloid to copy the US Billboard publication and list the top selling records as well as the top sheet music sales.

Over the years Perrin's contacts allowed him to eventually launch his own public relations agency, and clearly someone with a master plan then contracted with Perrin to launch the quality image of Radio Caroline as a neo-clone of a pseudo-Marconi production. Back in 1922, it was Marconi that created radio station 2MT based in a village called Writtle, just outside of Chelmsford. That was before a BBC station ever went on the air, and thus 2MT became the first broadcasting station in the United Kingdom.

The decades went by and then in 1964 the opportunity was created to launch Radio Caroline as a commercial radio successor in interest to Marconi's 2MT. Behind the scenes was not Marconi, but Pye, and the Pye Plan was to use Radio Caroline as an audio battering-ram that would demonstrate a public daytime demand for UK commercial radio. The targeted audience were bored English wives who did not go to work and lived in the more affluent part of England.

However, Radio Caroline was to be a short-term project. It was intended as a means of swaying political votes for licensed land-based commercial radio by establishing a demand from its primarily female listeners looking after a house and raising young children. There was a very limited and narrow window of opportunity to make this happen. Allan Crawford's interests were woven into this Plan, but before Crawford could go on the air he had to get a radio ship, and the Texan owners of the ship that he wanted to lease, would not release it until another ship was used as a guinea pig to prove that the UK government would not seize the vessel.

So the mv Fredericia became Crawford's guinea pig. If this test was passed successfully, then Crawford's interests would be folded into the Pye Master Plan, although it was hoped that the operation would result in land-based licenses almost immediately. There were almost 200 radio stations in various stages of formation that were seeking licences.

A potential deadline was also in the offing. If the Labour Party won the next General Election, then all bets were off. They would not license sponsored commercial radio stations, and they had already made a political noise about rolling back the ITA television program contractors.

But the author of the Master Plan was Charles Orr Stanley who was working with his son John, and they controlled the Pye Group of companies which held existing government contracts in many areas. Stanley was secretly playing all sides against the middle, and for fear of losing his government contracts, he dare not let it be known that he was 'Mr Big' behind the Radio Caroline venture. Stanley did not have to use his own money, only his influence, because there were several wealthy vested interests who wanted to obtain commercial radio licenses.

However, to make Radio Caroline into a serious venture and not a buccaneering exploiter, it was necessary in the first stage to aim at a middle-of-the-road presentation for a daytime audience. No controversy, no politics, no religion. Herbert W. Armstrong who had previously contracted with the Voice of Slough / GBOK project, then turned to Allan Crawford and in 1962 Crawford agreed to take his programming. This is semi-noted in the Radio Atlanta Rate Card which accepted sponsored programming. It was not a part of the original Radio Caroline Rate Card. When Pye stepped in, Armstrong was pushed out.

Radio Caroline as a station was therefore cloaked in the wardrobe of the Establishment magazine 'Queen', and its initial presenters were drawn from the world of the theater. Being able to rub shoulders with the pop world just emerging with the Beatles, and Princess Margaret and her club trend-setters was also good camouflage. But the equipment to be used by Radio Caroline also had to represent the best that the broadcasting industry had to offer. Yet the name 'Pye' could not be stamped upon it.

Because this successor to British Marconi's achievement with 2MT could not use British equipment, Pye turned to the same sources in the USA that equipped the mv Mi Amigo. George Saunders remarked that it looked as if the equipment had been plucked from a catalog. Some of it was totally unnecessary for an offshore station, but necessary for a USA FCC licensed station.

However, with Crawford in the background, a Marconi employee was wheeled out to be 'sold' as the mastermind who put this new station together, and this former Marconi employee was draped in achievements that in reality were not his to claim. Another wrinkle was in the fact that Arthur Carrington's specialty was promoting the sale of Marconi television cameras. He was not a radio man.

Perrin assigned the PR contract to David Block, and a Radio Caroline booklet shouting the praise of Arthur Carrington, was the result - even though Carrington never showed his face or answered a single question at a Radio Caroline press conference. So  it was that when Radio Caroline came on the scene it sported the very best in broadcasting equipment which everyone was told, had been installed by a Marconi employee whose prior achievements had been noted by all. Of course there was just one problem: That was not exactly the true story behind the creation of Radio Caroline.

But David Block's writing skills and his layout artist worked a charm with their booklet! Both the press and the public 'bought' the message that David Block had delivered, and to distract nosy reporters, a young; good looking gad-fly and gifted 'blatherer' named Ronan O'Rahilly, was hired to draw attention to redirect all of the unwanted questions to himself and his make-believe life..

In response, Ronan shoveled out story after made-up or exaggerated story about his quest to promote a blues singer named Georgie Fame, because all he ever wanted to do was to record Georgie Fame and get his record played on the air. Never mind that Georgie Fame was already doing well and EMI issued an LP featuring him, long before Radio Caroline ever came on the air. Never mind that the theme of Radio Caroline was an instrumental tune played on an organ by a U.S. jazz musician; or that the first record played in regular programming was by the Rolling Stones featuring a Buddy Holly song; or that test broadcasts had also featured the sound of Ray Charles.

However, while Radio Atlanta had indeed been put together in the USA by a dedicated, and very qualified team of professional broadcasters and engineers so that it only lacked a new mast and antenna before it could go on the air, the same was not true of Radio Caroline. It was built one step at a time, and the first step was buying a ship. The second step was installing transmitters and a studio. The final step was building a mast and attaching an antenna to it.

It was fine for David Block to create a image by claiming that Marconi's Arthur Carrington had created Radio Caroline, but in reality the work was performed in secrecy because not all of the people involved were qualified to build an entirely new radio station. Meanwhile Arthur Carrington who was this supposed engineering genius, was nowhere to be seen and photographed!

It now appears that the reason for 'puffing-up' the achievements of Arthur Carrington was in order that the entire venture would be interpreted as his work, and his work alone. Coincidental with this PR exercise, David Block had to steer clear of anything to do with the mv Mi Amigo and Radio Atlanta. That was a separate project by other people who just happened to use the same wharf to tie up to in Eire. David Block and Leslie Perrin did not represent them. They had their own public relations firm called Ed White and Associates.

Block made no mention of Thomas; Gilman or Spencer, yet we know that Spencer built the broadcasting mast on the Fredericia from which he hung the antenna that Gilman had designed. We also know that Thomas appears to be the main link to John Stanley of the Pye Group of companies, and that Thomas, Gilman and Spencer were all present at Greenore. But was Carrington ever there?

Here is what we do know for sure:

We know that Arthur Carrington had been employed by the Marconi Television Demonstration Unit, and that his achievements with regards to television camera promotion are well documented. We also know that he knew Alfred Nicholas Thomas as far back as 1950, and one year later on August 8, 1951, we can still place Carrington at Marconi promoting television cameras.

In 1955, Arthur Carrington was hired by Howard Thomas of ABC-TV to head up the engineering staff of the joint ABC-ATV Alpha television studios. (Howard and Arthur were not, as far as we know, related.) This new employment brought Carrington into the sphere of Charles Orr Stanley and his Pye Group of companies. After WWII, Stanley had been the driving force behind the introduction of both sponsored commercial television and radio stations in the United Kingdom, and Stanley was also connected to Howard Thomas via many contacts in the ITA franchised venture..

Now we have the team of Alfred Nicholas Thomas, who went to work with Gilman for Pye on projects relating to the promotion of licenses for sponsored radio broadcasting, and Thomas who had previously worked with Carrington. But to see where Carrington fits into the installation of equipment on board the mv Fredericia, we first have to turn back to Harry Spencer's account of events at Greenore.

Then we can read the account of Ove Sjöström about his clash with George Saunders - who claims to have sacked him due to poor work. But in reality, that remark about "poor work" may have been a totally unjust allegation, because Sjöström may have been acting in desperation as a result of the poor work initially carried out by unknown Irish workers at Greenore. They held a grudge against Harry Spencer, but no one knew this thanks to David Block. He falsely attributed the work to Arthur Carrington!

I originally planned to conclude this section today, but because the next part is a blog in itself, I will wrap up this true story behind the electrical installation dispute, tomorrow.

[This text was both expanded and amended after its first publication on line today in this blog.]

On a September day in 1950, Alfred Nicholas Thomas who was representing the BBC in experimental live television transmissions from an aircraft; found himself working with Arthur Carrington of Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co. Ltd., on the same project.

Long before microwave links made live network television transmissions a very ordinary and practical means of relaying television signals, several people had begun experimenting with the idea of turning circling aircraft into flying antennas. One such group was the U.S, Westinghouse company with their version called 'Stratovision'. It was later used by a U.S. university, and it was also adopted by the U.S. military which used it over South Vietnam during the wars in South-east Asia.

But in the U.K., it was the BBC monopoly which had resumed TV transmissions commenced before WWII, that teamed up with the Marconi company to experiment with live television programs transmitted from a flying aircraft to a ground station. It was this event which brought together a BBC transmitter expert named Alfred Nicholas Thomas and Marconi's lead spokesman for television camera sales named Arthur Carrington, way back in the year 1950. In the middle of their escapade were representatives of the Pye Group of companies.

​Arthur Carrington covered the same event for a Marconi publication, and although he acknowledged the BBC, he made no mention in his report of Arthur Nicholas Thomas. However, it is clear that these two men worked together on projects such as this from at least 1950 onwards.

We are following the recruitment of young George Saunders from his job at Marconi, to becoming the Chief Engineer on board the mv Mi Amigo - via initial recruitment in 1964 by John Howard Gilman in a Chelmstord pub.

​Although George was finally hired at Greenore, Eire following a final vetting by Alfred Nicholas Thomas: he did not travel back to England from Greenore on board mv Mi Amigo.

The significance of the "Made in Texas" label relates to answering this question: Who was the engineer in charge of the mv Mi Amigo after leaving Greenore? Obviously it could not have been George Saunders, and the broadcast snippet of true 1960's Texas radio delivery as accessed above, was broadcast on Monday, May 18, 1964. That was long after the mv Mi Amigo had departed from Greenore. So if George Saunders was not in charge of the initial broadcast engineering, which seems likely due to the notice he would have to give to his employer at Marconi (assuming that he was still working there and did not quit before he went to Greenore, which seems to be an unlikely and imprudent thing to have done), then who was Bob Scott and his dj son 'Johnny Jackson' supposed to be turning to for broadcast engineering guidance?

The answer is provided in writing by Allan James Crawford.

Bob Scott and Johnny Jackson were Texans whose true identity was as father John Thompson and son Johnny Jackson. Allan Crawford sent this note out to Bob Scott on the mv Mi Amigo, with instructions that identified who was in charge of broadcast engineering:

Milan Leggett was the Engineer in Charge representing Gordon McLendon's broadcasting interests as owner of the mv Mi Amigo. Allan James Crawford did not own the ship, and neither did Project Atlanta Limited which was registered in London on August 1963. At the time of registration, that company did not have its heavy-weight board of directors that were added later; prior to December 1963 when the mv Mi Amigo departed from Galveston Island, Texas.

The "Mr Thomas" that is referred to in Crawford's handwritten letter, is Alfred Nicholas Thomas who was working for Charles and John Stanley of the Pye Group of companies. Milan Leggett was in charge of McLendon's interests, and Thomas was in charge of the Pye interests.

As if to put the McLendon 'stamp of ownership' on the mv Mi Amigo, the company registered in the UK by Allan James Crawford was named Project Atlanta Limited. There is the possibility that when Crawford originally began working on a broadcasting venture in 1962, with plans to use the Trinity House Vessel (THV) Satellite, he may have originally intended to call his station 'Atalanta' due to a Belgian connection. However, when Crawford's first attempt was doomed, his second attempt involved trying to humor Gordon McLendon, and thus Atalanta became  'Atlanta'. There is a certain amount of McLendon humor involved here. It was in the tiny town of Atlanta, Texas where McLendon went to school and began using its stadium speaker system as his foray into play-by-play commentary. To name the offshore station 'Radio Atlanta' after such an insignificant dot on the map, smacks of McLendon's version of Scottish humor where his Houston station call letters were KILT and illustrated with a tartan configuration, and where he referred to himself as 'The Old Scotchman', and not 'The Old Scotsman' referring to genealogy.

We do know that Harry Spencer had been at Greenore prior to the evening of February 25, 1964, which is when he watched the Cassius Clay fight on TV with the locals. We also know that Planet Productions Limited was not even registered until two days after the fight on February 27, 1964. So who was paying Harry Spencer, and how where they paying him?

For that answer we have to return to Spencer's summons to 47 Dean Street, in the Soho District of London. That meeting was called by Allan James Crawford, but it was not conducted by him. When Spencer arrived he first met Arthur Nicholas Thomas, and he grilled Spencer about erecting a mast on a ship that would be capable of supporting a radio broadcasting antenna.

Then he met Captain De Jong Lanau, Superintendent of Wijsmuller Shipping and Towing, and Lanau had Ronan O'Rahilly in tow. But all of this was at Allan Crawford's offices and studio, and so far, nothing had happened. There were no secrets during this planning phase, and this was only the beginning of what would always develop as a joint project!

 Clearly separate financial accounts had been created, but Crawford was working with Captain De Jong Lanau of Wijsmuller, and it was that company which coordinated all work performed on both the mv Caroline and the mv Mi Amigo,

Concurrent with these activities was broadcast training for both ship stations that was also undertaken at Crawford's premises located at 47 Dean Street. All of Radio Caroline's early programming was created on tape in the top floor studio owned and controlled by Allan James Crawford.

But it is that fable spun by David Block of Leslie Perrin and Associates public relations firm, which we will explain tomorrow. It is the same story that resulted in George Saunders claiming to have fired Ove Sjöström due to incompetence. But, it is also the same story that links Arthur Carrington to Alfred Nicholas Thomas via a long relationship. That connectivity of interests runs through the person of Charles Orr Stanley and his Pye Group of Companies!

This is the story that we will elaborate upon tomorrow.

We begin with the  conundrum bolstered by Paul Rusling who produced the latest in a stream of totally fictitious works about the origins of Radio Caroline. He did so to avoid issues that had been brought to his attention within the 'Caroline Newsletter'.

Rather than work with a research team to solve the problems that existed in the prevailing and accepted story,  Rusling merely stole from the 'Caroline Newsletter' and private correspondence, and then he tried to hammer into several round holes an equal number of square pegs after which he abandoned those he did not know what to do with.

But as we have revealed to date, several people who were in Greenore while both the mv Caroline and the mv Mi Amigo were there, have revealed their part in a joint working plan, although up until now, we have not specifically revealed the reasons for the plan, or how a team was assemble to implement it.

Instead, for our part we have progressed unhurried and followed the pattern of a cold case crime investigation. We are carefully examining all of the evidence and then cross-examining statements to see where they are in agreement and supported by external contemporary sources, while observing where witnesses are merely guessing as to what happened.

Because the scene shifts to Greenore, it is necessary to examine what Greenore is, and what Greenore is not, within the meaning of this story. Remember, we are dealing only in facts. The area of Greenore we are interested in, is that area that was at one time occupied by a railway terminus; a hotel, and a wharf connecting to a steamship ferry mainly transporting visitors and goods from the island of Great Britain, to the island of Ireland.

Many writers have claimed that In 1964, the owner of the former railway terminus; hotel and wharf was an Irishman who was also the father of Ronan O'Rahilly. So, it is necessary to bury this myth once and for all time. Ronan's dad was about as Irish as a plastic shamrock made in the USA and sold by a franchised Woolworth's store operating in Eire.

Ronan's dad was born in England and he married a U.S. citizen. They bought plans for the house they lived in near Dublin, which is where young Ronan grew up as one of their several children, from the Macy's department store in New York City, New York, USA.

On the other hand, Charles Orr Stanley who looms big in this entire story that dates back to the beginning of broadcasting in the United Kingdom, is about as Irish as they come, even though he was a Protestant in a sea of Roman Catholics.

So it will be necessary to track the business biography of both O'Rahilly Sr., who managed the building supply company that owned the semi-abandoned site at Greenore when the two ships docked there, as well as the Stanley family, and trace its Irish roots near Cork.

But not now.

Right now we want to remind readers of what we are doing and why we are doing it.

We are still nailing down a solid timeline, which is a timeline that no other writer has ventured to accomplish. Go on, check it out. Name the book that has all of this in print for you to turn to: that's right, it does not exist!

Why?

Because all of the fake Radio Caroline books want to tell you that Atlanta and Caroline were two separate projects, and the only way they can do that is by jumping the page, or I should say jumping the months from August 1963 to March 1964. Oh, there are film clips from Greenore that appear to show what is going on at Greenore prior to March 1964, but they are very general and non-specific.

It is the specificity of our own very accurate, and some might say very boring, methodical cold-case crime scene type of investigation that is now bringing you the real story for the first time.

Tomorrow we go back to the investigation itself .... 

During the time that George Saunders was at Greenore, which appears to have been after Friday, March 13, 1964, since the mv Mi Amigo was already there, but as previously noted, it was before Tuesday, March 23, 1964, when the mv Caroline (ex-Iseult; ex-Fredericia) departed; Harry Spencer [shown left] was already at work on the mv Caroline.

Spencer has often repeated to several people, an apocryphal tale involving the anti-English attitude of Aodogán O'Rahilly, who was the father of Ronan O'Rahilly. According to Spencer, not only did Aodogán O'Rahilly not like Spencer simply because he was English, but he would not even look at him when talking about him when Spencer was present. According to Spencer, Aodogán O'Rahilly turned his chair around so that only his back was visible to Spencer. This is most peculiar for several reasons.

First of all Aodogán O'Rahilly was by birth an Englishman having been born at Hove near Brighton. Second, the impression that has been created is that Aodogán O'Rahilly owned a 'port' at Greenore, and his son Ronan negotiated its use for his own 'Caroline' project as well as the 'Atlanta' project of Allan James Crawford. But this is another apocryphal tale lacking veracity.

We know that the 'Caroline' project was not originated by, or even managed by Ronan O'Rahilly who was but a convenient stooge thrown to the press by a PR firm. We also know that Greenore was neither a 'port' at the time, and neither was the land adjacent to the waterfront at Greenore, owned personally by Aodogán O'Rahilly.

The true story is that the disused railway terminal at Greenore had been bought at auction several years before, by a building company managed by Aodogán O'Rahilly. At a second auction some time later, a disused railway hotel adjacent to the railway terminal had also been bought by the same building company which was not even located at Greenore.

The plan for these auction purchases was to demolish all structures on the site; clear away the rubble, and then to build a new factory and use part of the land for the  movement and parking of heavy duty trucks and trailers. However, the building materials company did not have the money to go ahead. This is where the 'useful stooge' named Ronan, was brought in to get his Irish Republican father to let 'friends' of his son go ahead and equip two ships at the water's edge, and to also use the adjacent land for construction purposes.

To sell this idea to his father, Ronan did not refer to the name of an Englishmen, instead, he used the name of Australian Allan Crawford. Behind Crawford was an Irishman named Charles Orr Stanley who had extensive business interests in the Republic, and a family home near Cork. So when Spencer and other Englishmen started popping up at Greenore and Aodogán O'Rahilly got to hear of it, he was none too pleased.

George Saunders does put his own visit to Greenore within the context of work already being carried out by Harry Spencer.  Saunders also observed that as an Englishman he found the location to be somewhat unfriendly. While he was on the mv Mi Amigo at Greenore, Saunders was told that ".... 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."  That remark referred to the ongoing work of Harry Spencer.

Because Harry Spencer was the person who rigged the masts on both the mv Caroline and the mv Mi Amigo, it is helpful that Harry Spencer provided us with a time-marker. In his own account of work at Greenore which appears in the Appendix to Humphries' book (as noted earlier), Spencer says that he watched the famous "Sonny Liston and Cassius Clay" fight on television while he was at Greenore. The date of that boxing match was February 25, 1964.

This date is also important because it provides for more inter-connectivity in this singular project involving two radio ships. That inter-connectivity is provided by details of the business relationships between Harry Spencer and John Howard Gilman and Allan James Crawford and Captain De Jong Lanau.

Gilman seems to have been the second man in the broadcast team headed by Alfred Nicholas Thomas. It was Thomas who had retired from the BBC in 1959 and begun working for one of Charles Orr Spencer's Pye Group of companies. The first assignment Thomas had under this arrangement was to work on the VRON/CNBC project, but it failed due to lack of money on the Dutch side of the operation.

Thomas brought in Gilman and then Gilman bought in Saunders for approval by Thomas. But it is even more interesting to note that Gilman performed work for both the mv Caroline and mv Mi Amigo, and that he could not have done so until Spencer had been hired by Captain De Jong Lanau! However, dependent upon all of that was the coordinated sailing of the mv Mi Amigo from Galveston, Texas with McLendon engineer Milan Leggett on board; and the almost simultaneous purchase of the mv Fredericia which was then towed by Wijsmuller from Copenhagen to Wijsmuller facilities near Rotterdam!

Spencer explained in the Humphries' Appendix how he designed the custom-built masts for both the mv Caroline and mv Mi Amigo, to which he then attached antennas to each mast that had been designed by John Howard Gilman. We also know from the original account provided by Alan Bednall that was recovered from Wroughton archives, that the involvement by Charles Orr Stanley in masterminding all of this was regarded as 'top secret'. Even the board of directors of the Pye Group of companies in Cambridge were not aware of how this operation was being conducted on a military "need to know" basis. Everyone worked through intermediaries where necessary.

We can trace the first meeting between Harry Spencer and Alfred Nicholas Thomas back to Allan Crawford's office/studio at 47 Dean Street in the Soho District of London. That is where Spencer met both Ronan O'Rahilly and Captain de Jong  Lanau, Chief Superintendent of Wijsmuller Towing Company , for the very first time.

We know now that Spencer was at Greenore with both Thomas and Gilman before Saunders arrived, and we also know that Spencer was at Greenore before February 25, 1964 when the Cassius Clay fight was televised, and thus we also know that Planet Productions Limited would not be registered for the very first time, and in Ireland, until two days after that famous boxing match.

If Planet Productions Ltd did not exist until February 27, 1964, but both ships had been obtained during the closing hours of December 1963, and work was underway on both of them at Greenore; then, in the minds of most people who have been following this story, that would only leave Project Atlanta Limited as the driving force. But that company which had been registered in England during August 1, 1963, had only a skeleton board of directors at first, and the big money names did not join its board of directors until some time had passed, after that date.

So who was really running this 'show'?

​More tomorrow ....