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Radio Caroline was the iconic pirate radio station, immediately capturing the imagination of millions of people when it started broadcasting cutting-edge music to Britain and Ireland from international waters in 1964. When he first went out to the radioship, the Ross Revenge, in December 1985, Steve Conway, a 21-year-old IT executive, was fulfilling his dream of working on Caroline. |
Despite his young age, he soon became a vital part of Caroline’s ship-board team, broadcasting music and news programmes, helping keep the vessel seaworthy during fierce storms, and making sure the station ran smoothly on a shoestring budget, despite staffing problems, technical crises and harassment by the authorities.
In this gripping memoir, Steve Conway tells of his time aboard the Ross Revenge: the excitement, and danger, of living on board ship for long spells, the constant challenge of keeping complex electronic equipment working in sometimes treacherous conditions (including the collapse of the ship’s main mast in November 1987), and the camaraderie of working alongside people who, like him, were completely committed to the radio station. In the dramatic climax to the book, he tells of the sad demise of Radio Caroline as a ship-based station, and how he and his few remaining companions narrowly escaped drowning after the ship ran aground on the notorious Goodwin Sands in hurricane-force winds in November 1991. |
