Читать книгу Abandoned Places: 60 stories of places where time stopped - Richard Happer - Страница 17
ОглавлениеDATE ABANDONED: 1943
TYPE OF PLACE: Military fortification
LOCATION: Thames Estuary, UK
REASON: War
INHABITANTS: Up to 265
CURRENT STATUS: Ruined
WHEN HITLER’S LUFTWAFFE TARGETTED SHIPPING IN THE RIVER THAMES DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR, THE ADMIRALTY CREATED AN EXTRAORDINARY UNIT OF OFFSHORE ANTI-AIRCRAFT FORTS. IN THE 1960s THE DECOMMISSIONED STRUCTURES BECAME HIDEOUTS FOR PIRATE RADIO STATIONS BEFORE BEING LEFT TO THE MERCY OF THE SEA.
Red Sands Sea Forts in the Thames estuary, now abandoned. The Kentish Flats windfarm is just behind on the horizon.
Stalkers of the sea
They look like one of H. G. Wells’ most fantastical creations come to life: four-legged, fat-bodied metal monsters striding in formation through the waves off the English coast. But these sea-bound structures are not invaders: they were actually a vital part of Britain’s coastal defences in the Second World War.
They would also have been a prime contender for the title of strangest street in Britain. For here 265 men lived in seven interlinked houses, each measuring just 11 m (36 ft) square and completely surrounded by the cold, black waters of the North Sea.
Innovation in offshore defence
London’s docks were the busiest in the world in 1939. They were the trade hub of the British Empire and a conduit for one third of the country’s imports and exports, handling 35 million tonnes of cargo per year. More than 100,000 dockers, stevedores and sailors bustled around 1700 wharves. The outbreak of the Second World War made the docks – and the Thames shipping routes – imperative targets for German bombs.
With the war under way, German aircraft laid thousands of magnetic mines in British waters. Over 100 British ships were sunk in the Thames estuary alone in the early months of the war. The Thames urgently needed anti-aircraft defences and the Admiralty asked engineer Guy Maunsell to help. He designed two types of fort, the Navy and the Army styles.
An ‘Army fort’ comprised a group of seven 4-legged towers connected by tubular steel walkways. These structures were built in Gravesend, towed down-river and then carefully sunk onto the seabed between May and December 1943. There were three Army forts: Nore, Shivering Sands and this one at Red Sands.
Each tower had a two-storey structure for living and working, with differing artillery or other equipment on the roof: one tower had two 40 mm Bofors medium anti-aircraft guns, four towers had 3.7-inch heavy anti-aircraft guns, one tower had a searchlight and there was also a central control tower with radar.
The forts were not a popular posting among soldiers. As well as being cold, windy, damp and isolated places to live, the towers were very vulnerable to enemy attack. Being metal towers amid an open sea also made them extremely good lightning conductors. Even on non-stormy days static electricity would build up to such an extent that soldiers who touched metal door handles would be thrown across the room.
Nevertheless, the Thames forts were a success. Their searchlights picked out hundreds of approaching aircraft and their guns downed twenty-two planes, over thirty flying bombs and accounted for one U-boat. They were maintained for a decade after the war ended, but in 1956 their guns were removed and they were left to the mercy of the North Sea. They would probably all have been allowed to rust into oblivion were it not for some very unlikely new tenants: rock-and-roll radio outlaws.
Ruling the airwaves
In 1964, a new era in broadcasting was launched from a ship moored outside UK territorial waters: Radio Caroline. This pioneering pirate radio venture inspired promoter and personality Screaming Lord Sutch to set up ‘Radio Sutch’ in one of the Shivering Sands towers a few months later. For the next few years the venture flourished, taking over the four other towers that were still connected by walkways, and becoming known as Radio City. Red Sands was also occupied by a pirate broadcaster: Radio Invicta, later named Radio 390.
The Army forts were ideal for pirate radio broadcasting in their form as well as their location. A large antenna could be placed on the central tower and then guyed to the surrounding towers. They had also been designed for habitation, however rudimentary.
The pirates were outlawed for good in 1967 and formally evicted; but there would be one final offshore resident.
The Principality of Sealand
Paddy Roy Bates was an ex-British Army major and pirate radio broadcaster. When offshore broadcasting was outlawed in 1967 he moved into Roughs Tower, a Maunsell fort of the Navy design. He then declared this to be the ‘Principality of Sealand’, the world’s smallest independent country, and himself to be its prince. ‘Prince Roy’ created a constitution, a national anthem and a flag, and he issued passports. The Royal Navy tried to close him down, but their case was thrown out in court: the judge ruled that Britain had no territorial right over Sealand. Thereafter Bates was left to pursue his eccentric vision of nationhood more or less unmolested.
Red Sands today
The Nore group of towers was considered a shipping hazard and was completely demolished in 1959. A ship crashed into one of the Shivering Sands towers in 1963, knocking it into the sea. That leaves Red Sands Fort as the only complete set of Maunsell Army towers still standing.
The first difficulty faced by would-be visitors to Red Sands Fort is that of simply finding the place: the fort stands 10 km (6 miles) offshore from Minster on the Isle of Sheppey. That accomplished, the heaving sea makes getting a boat in close a highly risky endeavour. On approach the image of giant stalking machines is even more powerful as the towers dominate any craft. The tower ‘bodies’ are all rusted a violent red all over, with the occasional daub of white paint picking out the slogan of a long-defunct radio station.
The sea-level ladders and walkways that soldiers once used to access the towers are now rusted to the point of uselessness, with the brine-rotted metal crumbling to the touch. However, a few visitors have managed to climb inside and they have reported a fascinating window into Britain’s wartime past.
The cell-like iron rooms are still cluttered with rusted generators, the remains of radar equipment and steel-legged tables where enemy aircraft movements were plotted. There are bookshelves for charts and logbooks, and a cast-iron enamelled bath in which soldiers must have once sat and washed themselves while staring out of the window at the endless sea. From the roof it is easy to see how the seven towers would once have linked up so neatly, and how impressively exact their construction was in such an incredibly difficult environment.
In 1944 this spot would have been the centre of a blazing cacophony of gunfire, with men yelling and machinery clanking. Now the only sound is the slap of the waves, the odd seabird and the clanging of the bell in the nearby buoy that marks the edge of the shipping channel.
A few military furnishings still lie inside today.
A supply boat arrives at the active forts.
