CHAPTER ELEVEN: Shipwrecked at Frinton-on-Sea.

     January 19 1966 was a cold stormy day with snow along the coast. That morning I had been playing Get Off Of My Cloud by the Rolling Stones and It's My Life by the Animals. But no amount of good lively music would warm up this extra cold winter. By the evening the storm had increased and our little ship was rolling around in the turbulent North Sea. One of the deejays was seasick so I took over his shift opening with Day Tripper by the Beatles and closing with Eve Of Destruction by Barry McGuire. Little did I know! I was now tired so, after dinner, I got up and began to head for the door.
“Where're you off to Tom?” asked Tony Blackburn.
“Going to bed” I said “I want to be fresh for my morning show.”
     I was glad to settle into my bunk. Even though the ship was rolling, this never bothered me. I was fast asleep when Dave Lee Travis burst into the cabin. “Tom! Tom! Wake up!” he shouted.

The shipwrecked mariners. Photo by Central Press Photos, reprinted in ‘OffshoreRadio’, published by Iceni Enterprises.

“What's up, Dave?” I yawned.
“We're in a storm” Dave replied. “The Captain wants everyone up in the lounge, packed and ready to leave the ship.”
“Yeah, sure” I said, not believing him. We were always playing jokes on each other. And Dave had a great sense of humour. And besides, this was nothing in comparison to the storm I had been in on Caroline North in the Irish Sea. I believed that Dave was definitely playing a joke on me.
     Dave shrugged his shoulders and left. I turned over and went back to sleep. Next Graham Webb entered. “Tom, wake up ... Come on!”
“Hi Graham, what now?”
“Tom, it's serious. Get packed!”
I stretched slowly and said “Hell. Okay.” Graham rushed out the door.
     I was ready to play the joke. I dressed in my shore clothes, packed my bag and scampered up the stairs. In the lounge were Tony Blackburn, Graham Webb, Norman St. John, Dave Lee Travis and radio engineers George Saunders and Patrick Starling. I said “Okay you guys. I'll meet you on shore in the pub. Last one in pays for everyone's drinks.” Everyone laughed.

The mv.Mi Amigo washed up on Frinton beach.

     Then suddenly the ship heaved and the main engine raced. A couple of the Dutch crew went running by shouting “Hode verdomme!” Now I was concerned. Without hesitation I rushed up to the bridge to see what was going on. There was Captain Vrury and the Chief Engineer. “What's happening?” I asked.
     The captain turned to me and said “The storm has broken our anchor chain. The propellers are full of barnacles. They are unable to create enough thrust to move the ship. The wind is blowing us toward the shore.”
     I looked out at the dark night and I could see that something was wrong. None of the shore lights looked familiar. We must be moving. I rushed down to the studio. My concern was that if we were broadcasting inside the three mile international limit, we would be breaking the law. I also felt that it was important that the audience know what was happening. I had someone announce that, because there was the chance that we could drift inside the three-mile limit, we were going off the air now, but that we would be back on the air as soon as all was well and we were back out to sea.
     After that there was nothing I could do. The crew were doing whatever they could. I would just be in the way. I returned to the lounge and said to Dave “Hey, Dave, do you want to have a game of checkers?”
“Sure.”
     And so we began an intense game. Last time we had played, Dave had beaten me and I did not want that to happen again. He was good. The game was moving neck and neck, we were each holding ground and it was touch and go as to who would win when, suddenly, without any warning, the board went flying across the lounge. We heard a loud noise as the ship hit the beach. I had no idea that we were that close to the shore. Everyone scrambled out on to the deck. I will never know who would have won that game.

The Caroline Countdown for the week Caroline South ran aground. Number 2 was very appropriate. Fortunately no.12 was less so. Click to magnify.

     We were broadside to the beach, sitting miraculously between two concrete groynes. A few feet either way and our ship would have been dashed to pieces. Large waves were crashing over our ocean side, creating the danger that the power of the waves could force our ship over onto its side and possibly dump us all into the freezing cold ocean.
     Out on the deck, I could see the snow on the land and a lot of moving lights. There were people running about and muffled voices shouting. Then, through a megaphone, loud and clear, I heard “Stand back! Stand back! ... We're going to fire a rope! Get off the deck.”
     We all ducked back in the cabin and there was a loud bang as a rope came shooting onto the ship. This was grabbed by one of the crew and they set up a pulley system for a breeches-buoy, a system for hauling people off ships.
     Our crew was instructing us how to get into the breeches. These were like a pair of shorts with a buoy around your waist. You held on the best you could and, in jerks, you were pulled across the waves to the land.
     I had grabbed my bag and a large picture of Jeanine, my wife. I climbed into the breeches and, as I was hauled across the waves, I was bobbed up and down. With each ‘down’ I was dunked into the freezing ocean water, arriving on shore cold and wet. It was strange to feel the solid unmoving land. I was so used to the floor always moving that the firmness of the beach felt unsafe.
     There were many hands helping me out of the breeches-buoy and a police constable handed me a large hot cup of tea. “This should warm you up” he said with a chuckle. Ah! This was England! Once all of us were off the ship, except the captain and some crew, we were stuffed into a vehicle and driven to a store where we were given dry clothes, courtesy of an association that helped shipwrecked sailors. From there we were taken to a hotel for supper and a welcome night's sleep.
     Early in the morning I received a phone call from Ronan. “Come up to London right away. They want to interview you on ITN News.”
     Everything was moving so quickly. There was a picture of me being hauled off the ship, carrying a four foot picture of Jeanine, on the front page of one of the newspapers and suddenly I was on the TV. The interviewer asked me to describe the experience.
“We were told to abandon ship” I said, as the camera rolled. “When ashore, we were fed, given tea. Poor ship, left, and maybe battered to pieces by now.”
“Is this the end of Caroline South?” he asked.
“Hell no!” I said.

Rosko with Alfie the mynah bird.

     That first day in 1964, when I sailed out to the ship, my sons were one, three and four years old. We were living in Ealing, London, in a comfortable semi-detached house. It was a time when I would have loved to have had more time with my family but we were financially strapped. I was freelancing for the CBC but this hardly covered our expenses. So I subsidised my income by washing dishes at the Earl's Court Exhibition Centre. I also did a stint of singing on BBC TV for ‘peanuts’. So Radio Caroline was a godsend. Now at last we were covering our expenses. In fact, during those three years on Caroline, I had done well enough to buy a house in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, a place where my wife and my sons could be close to my mother and also near where I had lived as a boy. My brief times on shore were often taken up with concerts and guest appearances but Jeanine and the boys only gave me encouragement for this work. In fact it was Jeanine who started my fan club and kept it running to the end.
     It was strange being on Cheeta II. The studio did not have the full familiar sound of the Mi Amigo. We were all impatient for the return of our ‘old friend’. When I left for my shore leave Rosko was on the air with his mynah bird, the two of them chattering and bantering. As I sailed to shore in the tender, I was listening to them on a small radio by the boat's wheel and the skipper and I were laughing at his fast flowing antics. There was a spirit about the Radio Caroline sound that was contagious. It felt good. It made you feel that life was a joy. Even though we were out on the high seas, even though we were living in confined spaces, we were having fun and this was flowing through our programmes. There were so many new experiences always happening that, as I docked in Harwich, I was wondering what was waiting for me around the next corner.

©Tom Lodge 2002