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Seven miles out from the English coast in the North Sea

stands the man-made island declared the sovereign state

of Sealand by Roy Bates, its self-proclaimed prince.

Sealand was a wartime gun fortress.

Then Bates and his family acquired it by the simple expedient of stepping aboard and staying put.

On Christmas Eve,

Eve 1966, Roy Bates got into a speedboat, and he took the boat seven miles offshore

and climbed aboard a World War II gunnery platform called Ruff's.

The name of the fort was Ruff's tower, one of seven forts built to defend the Thames

Estuary during the last war.

Two were demolished after the war,

four remained derelict,

and Ruff's Tower, or Sealand, is alone inhabited.

Roy Bates throws a grappling hook up to the platform,

voice his way up there, and declares it his own.

The British government were not so happy with this and told him to vacate

the premises and he essentially replied, Bugger off and thus begins the story of the world's smallest independent nation.

Episode 4 from the sea freedom. It's an odd quirk of maritime wall that once you pass this invisible line and you enter international waters,

the local governments, the near shore governments

have no jurisdiction.

...