HAPPY 60th BIRTHDAY, RADIO CAROLINE!
Britain's first offshore radio station began broadcasting on 28th March 1964 - sixty year ago. This month we mark Caroline's diamond anniversary by reprinting a couple of publications
from the early days of its existence: About Radio Caroline from 1964 and a Caroline Club booklet from 1965.
The press release announcing the launch of Radio Caroline has been on The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame for some time. If you missed it, you can find it
here.
Last month we published a few Radio Caroline Albums Top 30s from the eighties, some incomplete. Many thanks to Harry Alferink for providing the missing details for the charts of 30th October 1983 and
15th April 1984.
We were very sad to hear of the passing of Keith Martin at the age of 89. He was involved in offshore radio from its very start in Britain and has been a great supporter of
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame over the years, sharing information, photographs and items of memorabilia. We will miss him. Our condolences to his friends and family. We pay tribute
here.
Those of you who enjoyed the Dutch service of Radio Northsea International will be saddened to hear of the death of disc-jockey Jan van Veen on 4th February, aged 79. He had previously been heard on Radio Veronica and, following the
demise of the pirates, went on to enjoy a long career in the Netherlands including spells with AVRO on Hilversum 3, Sky Radio and 100% NL.
If you have been listening to the new station Boom Rock, you may have been surprised to hear the voice of the late Tommy Vance.
Boom has used A.I to create new idents utilising the talents of a man who died nearly twenty years ago. (See the Daily Mail.)
A revised third edition of Ray Clark's book Radio Caroline: The True Story Of The Boat That Rocked is due for publication soon. Ray tells us he is hoping it will be ready in time for the talk about Caroline he is giving on
Thursday 28th March at the Electric Palace in Harwich. (Tickets for the event are available from Radio Caroline's web shop; the first edition of Ray's book is reviewed
here.)
See the contents page and DJ Directories of the sixties, seventies and eighties for full details of this website.
If you click to follow us on our Facebook page, you will be alerted when this site is updated.
It isn't just Radio Caroline that has a birthday in March. The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame first appeared on the web on 14th March 2000. 24 years old! Many thanks to
everyone who has supported us and/or provided material during that time. We couldn't do it without you.
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SIXTY YEARS AGO:
28th March 1964, 12 noon: Radio Caroline began regular transmissions on 1520 kHz (“199 metres”). Initial broadcasting hours were 6am-6pm. (See here for
more details.).
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Britain's first offshore radio station, Radio Caroline, began broadcasting at Easter 1964 from a ship anchored just outside UK territorial waters.
She was followed by a host of other radio stations based on boats and marine structures dotted around the coast.
These “pirates” rapidly won an enormous and enthusiastic audience.
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame
has been set up to honour the stars, the broadcasters, from that golden era of music radio.
This site is a tribute to the people who endured a daily battle with the elements to provide a soundtrack to the swinging sixties.
(The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame is a British-based website. It only includes those DJs who broadcast in English and could be heard in the UK. Offshore radio also flourished in Denmark,
Sweden, Belgium, the Netherlands, Israel and New Zealand. The absence of the DJs from these countries in the Hall of Fame does not suggest that they are any less deserving, just that they are outside the scope of this site. Please
see the links page for details of websites which cover offshore radio in other parts of the world.)
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The inductees in The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame are listed alphabetically. To find your favourite voice from the sixties either select
it from the drop-down list below, search the site using the Google box or click on the appropriate page from the table of contents beneath. For broadcasters from the later decades, go to the Seventies
Supplement or Eighties Supplement. There are some that we know very little about - see the help wanted page.
 
THE OFFSHORE STATIONS OF THE 60s, 70s AND 80s
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The Laser Story (part one) |
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We are very grateful to everyone who has contributed information, recordings or memorabilia to The
Pirate Radio Hall of Fame. We are always on the lookout for more so, if you have any items of interest, please get
in
touch.
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A number of the photos, stickers and recordings on this site are beginning to show
their age. Apologies for those that are of less than perfect quality. Many of the photographs were distributed freely by the various radio stations
and were intended for as wide a circulation as possible. Others have been donated to The Pirate Radio Hall of
Fame which are of unknown origin. Where photos have been scanned from books, newspapers or magazines, we have given credit.
However, if anybody believes that their copyright has been inadvertently infringed by the inclusion of an item on this site, please
get in touch and it will be removed immediately. Similarly, anybody who has supplied
audio for The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame has been credited but tapes get passed from collector
to collector and often there is no way of knowing who made the original recording. Our apologies to anyone who thinks their work has been used
here without due acknowledgment.
The name ‘Radio London’ and the RL logo are used by kind permission of Radio London Ltd.
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame links to MP3s which can be downloaded by UK-based
customers from Amazon. As in a traditional record shop, Amazon offers multiple versions of some songs. It isn't always easy to identify precisely which
version is which. We have endeavoured to ensure that each link leads to the appropriate version of the relevant track - the one that was played by the
offshore DJs of the era - but please listen carefully before purchasing. If you discover that any of them are later re-recordings, please
let us know.
The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame participates in the Amazon Europe S.à r.l. Associates Programme, an affiliate
advertising programme designed to provide a means for sites to earn fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.co.uk.
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