The Cilla Rose Affair Read Online Free PDF Page A

she had seven million listeners. In May, Radio Atlanta went on the air—the two ships merged a few months after that and Caroline sailed up to the Isle of Man and became Caroline North, and Atlanta was Caroline South. After that…” He spread his hands. “It was open piracy on the high seas. Invicta, King, Essex, London, 270, 390…”
    “And Seasound,” Wally Green reminded him.
    “And Seasound,” Darrow confirmed. “The GPO, which controlled communications at that time, began a campaign to ban off-shore commercial radio, but the law—the Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill—wasn’t introduced until the summer of 1966, and even then, it didn’t take effect for another year. And by that time, of course, the BBC had got into the act. Radio One went on the air in September, 1967, and they had Tony Blackburn doing the honours. He was a pirate, too, if you’ll recall, Wally—he’d been at Radio London.”
    “What was it like?” Wally Green said, leaning forward, cosily. “Give me an idea of a typical day on board the ship.”
    Darrow chuckled. “It was pretty grotty, you know. We went in three week cycles—two weeks on, one week off. We each had our own cabin, and we used to eat in the galley with the captain and his crew. We had a TV and plenty of cheap Dutch beer and cigarettes, and the tender used to come out once a week with provisions—newspapers, food. Our lifeline to shore, that tender was—the only way you could go or come.”
    “And the ship itself was an old World War Two minesweeper, if I’m not mistaken.”
    “That’s right, Wally. The Cilla Rose . She ran cargo after the war then went for a refit in Florida. She was Panamanian registered, 150 feet long, 450 tons. I have fond memories of her.”
    “And you were on the air for how long?”
    “Not long at all, really. Only a couple of months before she sank.”
    “And very tragic that was, too. You weren’t actually on board the night it happened.”
    “No,” said Darrow, “I was lucky. I had shore leave. A gale blew up in the night and she went down very quickly. There were ten people aboard the Cilla Rose , DJ’s, engineers, the captain and his crew, and only three managed to hang on until help arrived. I was devastated, of course, when I switched on the radio the next morning and learned what had happened. I did a great deal of soul searching after that, believe me.”
    “Well,” said Wally Green, “on to happier topics. You’re currently celebrating your 25th year on the air, Simon, and we’ve arranged a little bit of a do for you tonight—”
    Evan stopped the tape. “The rest is fluff,” he judged.
    His son had gone back to the manuscript. “One of your TV contemporaries in the sixties did something at a pirate radio station…didn’t he?” he said, thinking.
    “It was McGoohan,” Evan replied, rewinding the cassette. “Patrick McGoohan. Danger Man . The last episode of the third season— Not So Jolly Roger . They shot it at one of the wartime defence towers in the Thames Estuary—I believe it was Radio 390 at Red Sands.”
    “Murder, intrigue and treachery,” Ian said, darkly. “What happened the night the Cilla Rose went down?”
    “I’d got a message from Mark. We’d agreed on that ahead of time: if something urgent came up, if he was in trouble or he had news that couldn’t wait, he’d radio ship-to-shore with a coded message that would alert me. I’d go out to visit him, and then anything he had to pass along could be hidden in the binding of a book, which he’d hand to me without attracting undue attention to himself. The book that week was Muirhead’s Short Blue Guide to London . I’d just come back from a location shoot in the country when I got Mark’s message. I went out with that evening’s supply tender. There was very little he could say to me openly: he gave me the distinct impression he was being watched very closely. He managed to slip me the book—but when I got back to London, there