I read in the paper today that a country is up for sale with an asking price of only $126 million. Nothing as historic as the Vatican or as cold as the South Pole, of course. The Principality of Sealand is a self-proclaimed micronation on a former WWII fort and sits seven miles from Harwich, a coastal town and international port located on the estuary of the rivers Stour and Orwell in Northeast Essex, England. Sealand comes complete with its own Constitution, flag, coat of arms, stamps, passports, and currency. (One Sealand dollar is equal to one U.S. dollar.) That is so cool! I wonder if I would be able to have my picture printed on the money.
At first, I was irritated with myself for not buying that Gulfstream jet last weekend; I could have rented a good-looking pilot and had him fly me to Sealand. But after I took a closer look at the photos, I realized that there is nowhere to land! After all, this tiny little country used to be a fort!
I have always been sort of a history buff, so it was fascinating to learn that in 1967, a little spot in the ocean called Sealand actually became its own independent state after Paddy Roy Bates, a former British pirate radio broadcaster, moved in with his family and dubbed himself H.R.H. Prince Roy of Sealand. He had squatter's rights, I guess. Anyway, before being renamed Sealand, Bates' state was one of the Maunsell Sea Forts, small fortified towers built during WWII to help defend the United Kingdom. After a nasty little skirmish involving bullets and guns and a formal court ruling, it was determined that since HM Fort Roughs lay outside a three-mile radius of the British coastline, it was outside government control. And Sealand was born.
I can't believe an actual country is built on an artillery platform on top of an old fort on top of a sandbar! The whole place measures only 5,920 square feet—geesh, my house is bigger than that! Most of it is cold, rusty steel, which I don't look forward to seeing. It's going to need massive redecorating, especially after that devastating fire last June. Perhaps I can get Ty Pennington from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to spruce it up for me. I saw some glass tile flooring in a magazine last week that would look great in an entryway…I wonder if a fort even has an entryway? Hmm…this is going to be an interesting trip!
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