A-Bates-ed

Or

Bates No-tell

Roy Bates, who elevated a sitcom premise into a way of life after commandeering an abandoned British fort in the North Sea and declaring it a sovereign nation, has died of complications related to Alzheimer’s disease at the age of 91. In the 1960s, the former major in the British Army was among a group of disc jockeys setting up pirate stations to avoid England’s restrictive broadcasting regulations. Establishing a base in international waters, in 1967, he proclaimed his pile of abandoned junk to be the Principality of Sealand. The following year, he fired warning shots at an approaching British vessel and got arrested, but the British court ruled it had no jurisdiction. A decade later, Sealand’s prime minister Alexander G. Achenbach led a group of Germans who were stunned to realize there was a part of the continent they hadn’t invaded yet and attempted to remedy this injustice by staging a coup, taking Bates’ son hostage. Bates stormed Sealand in a dramatic helicopter raid, imprisoning one of the invaders. The German government asked Britain to intervene, but it declined, citing the lack of jurisdiction, and when they sent a diplomat to retrieve their citizen, Bates asserted that Germany had effectively recognized Sealand as a sovereign nation. None of the Bateses actually live on Sealand, which is accessible only by helicopter or being lifted off a ship by a crane and consists of modest living quarters, a kitchen, a chapel and an exercise area. The Bates family now sells “the Count/Countess package” offering anyone the chance at a “royal” title from a country that no other nation on earth has recognized, Germany’s eye roll and diplomatic “whatever” notwithstanding.