There are many reasons why I wanted to start my own country but one of my key inspirations was a rusting war fort in the North Sea home to Prince Michael of Sealand. Physically it’s not much to look at, but then neither is my flat, and it’s certainly had an eventful and fascinating history. And strangely, it appears to exist in a political vacuum…

Sealand’s territory is an abandoned World War 2 sea fort – designed to shoot down German aircraft and missiles – built 7 nautical miles from the East coast of Britain, in what at the time were international waters.

In 1967 former English major Paddy Roy Bates, over a few beers with his lawyer, realised the fort would make an ideal location for a pirate radio station, so he occupied the fort and settled there with his family, proclaiming his own state: Sealand.

A year later, the Royal Navy attempted to get rid of them, entering the waters around Sealand. Prince Roy responded by firing warning shots into the air and the Navy soon backed off. But the stubborn British government didn’t give up there. Having tried and failed to force him off his patch, they arrested Roy while he was on UK mainland and summoned him to court in Chelmsford. Amazingly, the court declared that Roy should be released as it could not exert any jurisdiction outside of British national territory. This was a great moral victory for Prince Roy as essentially the court had given Sealand de facto recognition.

When Britain extended its territorial waters from 3 miles to 12 miles in 1987, thus engulfing the fort, Prince Michael responded in kind by extending Sealand’s own territorial waters into a good chunk of the East coast!
Fortunately for both parties, international law doesn’t allow the claim of new land during the extension of sea rights so Britain has no more right to Sealand’s territory than Sealand has to Britain’s!

Sealand’s independence remained under constant threat and not just from the UK. In August 1978 several Dutch men and a German arranged to visit Sealand “to talk business”. While Roy was in England, they kidnapped his son, Michael, and took Sealand by force. Roy quickly gathered allies and recaptured his country, holding the attackers as prisoners of war. The German and Netherlands governments were forced to petition for their release.

When the “war” was over, the Dutch citizens were released, as per the Geneva convention. The German, one Professor Achenbach, was held a bit longer - he’d previously accepted a Sealand Passport, and was therefore guilty of treason. Germany had to send a diplomat directly to Sealand to negotiate since, fingers already burnt once by Prince Roy, the British Government was staying well out of it, insisting it had no jurisdiction. Prince Roy eventually agreed to release the professor but the German it seems, held a grudge. After his failed coup, Professor Achenbach established an "exile" government in Germany, in opposition to Roy Bates, assuming the title of "Chairman of the Privy Council".

In 1997, passports purporting to be from Sealand began appearing around the world. The fake passports were being mass-manufactured and widely sold over the internet by a Spanish-based group believed to be associated with the rebel "exile government”. At its height, there were about 150,000 of these dodgy passports knocking around, compared with just 300 legitimate passports issued by the Bates family to friends and employees since Sealand’s birth. Unsurprisingly, these dodgy passports, unauthorised by the Bates family, were being used for dodgy reasons. Some were used to open bank accounts under false names and they even surfaced in several high-profile crimes including the murder of fashion designer Gianni Versace.

The lesson here: make your passports hard to forge!