Isle of Wight's role in the rise and fall of pirate radio

The BBC had a monopoly and did not play pop music.

Scroll through the gallery above for more pirate radio pictures...

In early 1964 that monopoly was broken by radio stations operating from ships anchored just outside the three mile limit where British law did not apply, stations such as Radio London and Radio Caroline.

Eventually there were more than a dozen pirate stations dotted all around Britain’s coast.

The Radio Caroline South ship, the Mi Amigo. Its 190 ft aerial mast was also rigged by Harry Spencer. Photo © Alan Stroud/County Press.

A little known fact is that four of these ships were rigged by Spencer Rigging of Cowes on the Isle of Wight, run by Harry Spencer.

In a 1996 interview he told John Hannam, “An Irishman, Ronan O’Rahilly, wanted to start a radio station.

“I kept getting phone calls from his partner, Alan Crawford, who said, ‘We want you to come and talk about masts and rigging.’

“So I went to his office, the Merit Music Company in Soho. I didn’t know it was going to be a pirate radio ship at that time.

“It was described to me as a weather ship. I went in and met a Mr Thomas who was an ex-BBC technician.

“He said, “What height of mast do you think you could put in a ship 170 feet long and I said, ‘About 190 feet, something like that,’

“Then I met the Dutch captain and persuaded him that you could stand a mast up this size by telling him that his grandparents must have sailed around in vessels this size with a lot of canvas on, not just a radio antenna.

“With that, he had me in Amsterdam in two hours, with no passport, no luggage or anything. That was the start.

“I then got the job to mast and rig two other radio ships, Radio Caroline North which was anchored off the Isle of Man and Radio Caroline South which was in the Thames estuary where we met Simon Dee and Tony Blackburn.

“On the back of that, we went on to rig Radio Scotland and then Radio 270, off Scarborough.”

So well-established were the pirates that their adverts appeared in popular magazines and newspapers. Radio 270, rigged by Harry Spencer, advertised heavily. © County Press.

The pirate radio stations were an instant success and over the next three years they attracted millions of faithful listeners.

Everybody loved the pirates except the Labour government and in August 1967, they introduced the Marine Offences Act which couldn’t stop broadcasts from international waters but did make it illegal for British subjects or advertisers to have anything to do with offshore stations and apart from Caroline, the pirates closed down.

To replace them, Radio 1 was launched, but it was a poor substitute and in response amateur pirate stations sprang up across the country.

One of them was here on the Isle of Wight, ‘Radio Sound City’ broadcasting from studios at Porchfield — or to be more precise, the bedroom of 18-year-old Richard Brimson, then an apprentice at Plessey, Cowes.

Using a powerful medium wave transmitter built by Richard, the station attracted a lot of listeners during its short life and even had its own car stickers but a photo-feature in the Portsmouth Evening News was to be its undoing.

A reporter and photographer from The News were taken blindfolded to Sound City’s secret operating base.

The control room was what appeared to be an ordinary bedroom in a country cottage.

Lining the walls was an impressive array of panels, tape decks, record players and assorted audio apparatus.

In action behind a turntable was ‘Leo,’ one of the disc-jockeys, while two mini-skirted girls sorted records into playing order.

All of the Sound City team were teenagers. During the week, they worked as apprentices, motor mechanics, shop assistants, and clerks.

In charge of production was the driving force and brain behind Sound City, an 18-year-old known as ‘Brillo.

To the layman’s ear, the reception quality over radio appears to be near perfect.

Most of the equipment was made by Brillo. “We purposely kept the costs down in case we get raided. That way we don’t lose too much.”

The cheeky headline to the newspaper article didn’t help, ‘Radio Sound City is alive and well, broadcasting its jingles and pop music and playing hide-and-seek with the Post Office.’ It was red rag to a bull.

The Post Office, from their headquarters at Telephone House, Portsmouth, commented: “We were unaware of the station’s existence but now we know, we will be making inquiries.”

And they did. One Saturday afternoon, shortly after the article appeared, Post Office officials descended on Porchfield and raided the station, forcing it to close down in mid-broadcast.

Speaking today, Richard says: “I went into pirate radio with my eyes open. I knew I’d get caught eventually and I’d already put aside £30 which was the average fine for operating a pirate station, but I was shocked when I was fined £150 with £15 costs.

“It took me a year to pay it back at £3 a week and I was only earning £10 a week at that time!”

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