Sealand: Freedom, Fraud and Founding a Nation

Sep 8

Freedom, sovereignty, self-determination; these values have prompted innumerable wars and inspired people to risk their lives. Countries have formed and split as people have sought to determine their own national identity. Many of these struggles have resulted in stories which are tragic, triumphant, inspiring. Occasionally, though, they fall more on the side of the absurd. Such is the case with today's story about the Principality of Sealand, a purportedly sovereign nation built on an abandoned military platform at sea. This small, strange nation has endured for over 50 years and even stood strong through physical physical attacks and legal challenges. The majority of the story will be told here through a series of the most notable events involving the micronation, and since this is a longer video you’ll find the timestamps for individual sections listed in the description, along with sources for the information provided.

The man at the heart of this strange story bore the name Paddy Roy Bates, an experienced military veteran turned pirate radio broadcaster who had an appetite for adventure. Born in 1921 in London, Bates demonstrated his sense of adventure before he had fully reached the age of a man. At 15 years old, he lied about his age to join the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. A few years later, world war broke out across the European continent, and Bates would serve in the British Army where he reached the rank of major. There he took part in campaigns in Italy and North Africa, escaped capture by Greek forces, and suffered injuries from an exploding hand grenade which required significant facial reconstruction surgery.

After the war, while still recuperating from his injuries, he would meet model Joan Bates and the two would marry in 1949. In an interview decades later, Joan would say of her husband; "[he] should have been born 300 years ago. He's an adventurer, an entrepreneur. The challenge is what it's all about." True to form, he continued a life of adventure and enterprise; running businesses including meat trade and butchery, imports, and a fleet of fishing boats. In the 1960s, Bates reportedly became fascinated by the idea of pirate radio - independent and amateur broadcasters who would distribute popular new music over the airwaves in an attempt to circumvent what they saw as restrictive licensing rules in the country at the time. In 1965, he would launch his own pirate radio station - Radio Essex.

It could be said that this endeavor actually involved the meeting of two World War II veterans - Roy Bates, and the tower known as HM Fort Knock John. In the second world war, the British government had built a number of structures known as Maunsell Forts in the waters of the Thames Estuary. These large concrete and metal structures served as lookout locations for German ships and aircrafts, and themselves hosted a number of defensive armaments such as anti-aircraft guns. After the war, many of these structures would be abandoned.

It was one of these structures that Bates inhabited in 1965 and used to broadcast popular music. Radio Essex would run for just 2 years, during which time it faced legal repercussions including fines for unlicensed distribution of music. Radio Essex shut down on Christmas day of 1966, prompting Bates to eventually move on to a new location: HM Fort Roughs, located on the Rough Sands sandbar even further from the coast of England.

There was a reason for the move; Fort Roughs was built so far out from the coast that it was beyond the boundary line of international waters at the time. Today, the Sealand Government's official website calls the construction of the fort illegal since it was built in international waters, and states that the government's failure to destroy it after the war was likewise illegal. Thus, Bates saw the abandoned platform as up for the taking under the legal claim of terra nullius, or, "no man's land". Initially, Bates intended to use the platform to revitalize his pirate radio career. After some legal discussions with his lawyers though, a different path was chosen; the Principality of Sealand was declared a sovereign entity by the Bates family. Roy and Joan Bates became Prince Roy and Princess Joan of Sealand, proud leaders of their own nation. As you can probably imagine, simply declaring a nation is the easy part. To do all the things necessary to uphold and fulfill that dream is significantly more complex. Unsurprisingly, the occupation of Fort Roughs was almost immediately filled with challenge and excitement. But we've already established that Prince Roy liked it that way.

The Trial

In 1968, an incident near the site of the Fort Roughs tower resulted in shots fired at outsiders. The exact sequence and extent of events that transpired seems to depend on who you ask. Most available documents today report that the incident involved a couple of workers who were traveling near the platform for the purpose of servicing a buoy in the area. Believing their territory to be infringed, Roy's son Michael fired what he claimed to be warning shots out of his dad's .22 caliber handgun. The telling of events found on the official Sealand website are drastically more dramatic. Presented here verbatim;

"It was not long before the British Government decided they could not have what ministers described as a possible ‘Cuba off the east coast of England’. The military were promptly dispatched to destroy all other remaining forts located in international waters. The Bates family looked on as huge explosions sent the massive structures hurtling hundreds of feet in the air, and twisted and buckled debris floated past Sealand for days.

Helicopters that had carried the explosives buzzed menacingly above, and the navy tug carrying the demolition crew passed close by our fortress home and shouted “You’re next!” with an angry waving of arms. A while later a government vessel steamed to within fifty feet of Sealand, its boisterous crew shouting threatening obscenities at Michael, and his sixteen year old sister. Warning shots were promptly fired across the bow of the boat by Prince Michael, causing it to hastily turn and race away towards the UK, amongst a large cloud of black engine smoke."

Although the Sealanders' telling of the story is almost certainly embellished, not all of its circumstances are untrue. Neutral sources have acknowledged that the English government had wanted to take control of the remaining towers until such time as they could be destroyed, but were faced with difficulties of how to do so legally. Negotiations with inhabitants failed, so the government turned to a different tactic. The government's legal teams had researched the possession and believed that although the territory itself might be outside of their reach, laws governing British citizens would still apply to those on the island, and a conviction could force their departure. As possession of handguns and ammunition was heavily restricted in England at the time, Roy and Michael were arrested under charges of illegal possession under the UK Firearms Act.

The case in question quickly became one of scope and jurisdiction. It was clear that the use of the handgun would have been illegal under English law at the time. The defense relied on another argument; that the English courts had no jurisdiction to enforce the law in the independent Principality. In the end, the court came down in favor of the defendants and they were found not guilty. The judge first determined that the law had not been intended to apply to citizens outside of normal British territory, stating “Parliament has no doubt the power to make it an offense for a British subject to have a firearm with intent to endanger life in Istanbul or Buenos Aires, or where have you, but I do not think it has done so.” The judge concluded by further remarking “This is a swash buckling incident perhaps more akin to the time of Sir Francis Drake, but it is my judgment that the UK courts have no jurisdiction.” This decision has been used by the government of Sealand as support that they have received de facto recognition by the English courts.

Making Things Official

Seemingly emboldened by what he saw as a legal success in defending the declared micronation's independence, Roy Bates continued developing plans to capitalize financially on the unique situation. Naturally, there were business advantages to claiming territory outside the dominion of government interference, and Bates planned to leverage these in a number of ways. Plans for economic activity in the micronation included a hotel, casino, port, offices, and even a coffee shop. In addition, having already started the process of minting official documents, the country planned to obtain an income through the sale of items such as official coins, stamps, and passports. A flag had been designed and created to represent Sealand, consisting of opposing red and black diagonal corners with a white line running parallel through them.

Of course, along with a flag, the country needed other important symbols. The music playing throughout this section is actually the official anthem of Sealand. The motto for the country is the apt phrase e mare libertas, meaning, “from the sea, freedom.” Designs for coins, stamps and other documents were drawn up. Sealand’s stamps and coins would be issued in denominations of Sealand dollars, which were meant to be pegged exactly to the value of an American dollar. These and other similar documents, up to and including passports, were to be minted and sold as a means of income for the country.

About this time, Bates began working with outside groups whom he believed could connect Sealand to opportunities for official recognition and economic growth. They lobbied numerous governments around the world, asking for recognition as an independent state as well as applying for Visas under their Sealand passports. They also appealed to the International Frequency Reservation Board in an attempt to reserve some radio frequencies for official Sealand use, and obtained several opinions from legal authorities defending their status as a legitimate independent nation. These opinions are available on the official Sealand website and are very worth reading if you're interested in the philosophical and legal discussion therein.

The Coup and the International Hostage

As is always the case when large sums of money are at stake, one has to be careful who they trust. This lesson would be driven home with force in 1978. Here we need to introduce a man by the name of Professor Alexander Achenbach. Achenbach was a German native living in Luxembourg whose first official interaction with Sealand came in 1975, when he would help draft its official constitution. In 1976, Achenbach was charged in Luxembourg with fraud regarding activities of Sealand, and unsuccessfully attempted to force the issue of Sealand's sovereignty as a defense. This being unsuccessful, he would be found guilty of the relatively minor crime of selling Sealandic coins and stamps without a license.

Pressing the issue further, Achenbach attempted to legally terminate his German citizenship as he now claimed to be a citizen of Sealand. The German court declined on the basis that it did not recognize Sealand as an official state. The next move would up the ante considerably.

Achenbach told Prince Roy and Princess Joan that he had arranged for them a business meeting with investors in Austria who could help advance their plans. The pair went away on the trip, leaving son Michael behind. During this time, a helicopter containing several men landed on Sealand with forged documents purporting to show that Roy Bates had transferred his ownership of the property. After the helicopter landed, its occupants reportedly locked up the young Michael inside for several days before eventually putting him on a small fishing boat to Holland.

Determined to regain ownership of their territory, Michael and Roy met in England and created a plan. Once again, it would demonstrate their preference for the dramatic - with a fair bit of embellishment possible for good measure.

To get to the island, they would need transport. Not known to do anything by half measures, they enlisted the help of a friend named John Crewdson - a man known for his work as a pilot and stunt actor for a number of action films including James Bond movies. They assembled what the official website of Sealand refers to as the "Sealand special unit assault team" and made for the tower at dawn. Exactly what happened next is fuzzy, but one source states the following verbatim: "... they took [the] party by surprise. When Michael accidentally fired his sawn-off shotgun, the junta surrendered."

Among the initial raiding party were a couple of hired "mercenaries" and a man who had some connection to Sealand; Gernot Putz, the lawyer who had represented Alexander Achenbach in his attempt to have his German citizenship terminated. The offenders were put under trial by an ad hoc Sealandic court presided over by Roy Bates himself. The two mercenaries, admitting wrongdoing, were released. Putz, however, held a Sealandic passport. Due to these circumstances, the court found him guilty of the crime of treason. For this crime against the nation, he was levied a monetary fine and was held as a prisoner to perform such tasks as cleaning the bathrooms and making coffee.

Somehow or another, the German embassy became aware of the situation and got involved, as Putz was himself a German citizen. The German Embassy pressed the British government for action, to which the British government replied that the Principality of Sealand was outside of its jurisdiction. The German government protested, claiming that the act was still tantamount to an act of piracy just outside its waters, but this complaint led to no further action. The German Embassy for its own part sent a representative to visit the captive and ensure that he was safe and in appropriate condition. The tension of the situation was resolved when Putz was released after six weeks of captivity. However, the government of Sealand would use the official visit by an embassy representative as proof of further recognition from world governments.

The frankly baffling circumstances of the situation have led many to wonder whether the standoff was anything more than a contrived situation with all participants playing an inside role. The German embassy eventually came to the conclusion that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt. Some have noted that interactions between Putz and the Bateses were nearly immediately friendly after the conclusion of events, and Putz would represent the pair in a legal proceeding just a few months later in January of 1979.

The Crime Gets Real

Although the antics up to this point had probably caused ulcers for certain government officials, the activities relating to Sealand had stayed more or less contained away from the outside world. That trend would hold for a couple of decades before the country started coming up in connection with far more concerning issues.

In 1997, 27 year old Andrew Cunanan engaged in a 3-month killing spree ending in the deaths of 5 people, including Italian fashion designer Gianni Versace. Fleeing police confrontation, Cunanan broke into a luxury houseboat where he then took his own life. When police investigated the houseboat, they found a passport to the Principality of Sealand. The boat belonged to a man named Torstein Reineck, who had something of a reputation for extravagance and partying. It was also discovered that Reineck had what purported to be diplomatic license plates for his Mercedes.

That Sealand passports would show up attached to this manner of crime was a surprise even to its ruling figures. They had sold passports, an estimated 300 of them in total, but only to people they had known and trusted. Although investigators quickly determined that there was no reason to believe Sealand had anything to do with the murder, the mystery of the official documents remained. They would show up again a few years later, in much more extreme circumstances.

In 2000, Spanish law enforcement arrested 46 year old Francisco Trujillo Ruiz. Ruiz, a former police officer who had been removed from duty for criminal activities, was wanted for illegally selling millions of gallons of diluted gasoline. Ruiz responded by producing a diplomatic passport to the country of Sealand and claiming diplomatic immunity. He told the police that his office was an official Sealandic consulate and that they therefore had no right to be there. The passport and other documents, appearing quite official, briefly delayed the responding law enforcement until it could be determined that Sealand wasn't on any official signatory list which would grant immunity, and Ruiz was taken into custody.

Further investigation would reveal that Ruiz wasn't an envoy of Sealand at all, but the leader of an extensive criminal organization. Forging Sealand documents was actually a primary source of income, with some documents selling for tens of thousands of dollars, and buyers promised that they could use them for whatever diplomatic purposes they required. Further fake Sealand embassies were busted in Madrid, where police recovered hundreds of blank passports and thousands of other official documents. There were even diplomatic license plates which had been used on at least one occasion to secure a police escort by Madrid police.

These documents pulled up further crimes. One person claiming to be a Sealandic ambassador attempted to use the documents to acquire over 1,000 cars and apply for a 20 million Euro loan to purchase private planes. Some passports were sold to smugglers and as part of schemes to scam desperate refugees and immigrants with the promise of safe passage to a new country. There are even reports that Sealand documents had been used in dealings with the Russian mafia in an attempt to acquire tanks, helicopters and explosive ordnance for the purpose of sale to the heavily embargoed country of Sudan.

These actions came as a surprise not only to investigators, but also to the royal family of Sealand. Prince Michael Bates reportedly first learned of the availability of fraudulent documents when an acquaintance made an offhand remark about diplomas and passports available for sale on the site. Michael knew that no such items were available on the official website, and his friend pointed him in the direction of a very official-looking fraudulent website which did in fact list official documents for sale. In the following years, Sealand would curtail the practice of issuing passports before eventually stopping altogether.

Internet Piracy on the High Seas

Almost unbelievably, this story which began shortly after World War 2 takes us all the way to the age of internet freedom and even the early stages of cryptocurrency. For all the same reasons as pirate radio, independent territories attracted the attention of extreme data privacy advocates. For the owners of the island, this translated to another tempting opportunity to capitalize financially on their unique situation.

The sequence of events is almost redundant against the other major events we've covered so far; an eccentric and idealistic person with lofty ambitions contacts the Bates family to propose mutual cooperation and promise massive financial gains. In this case, it was actually a pair of libertarian cypherpunk programmers named Sean Hastings and Ryan Lackey. Lackey, 21, had dropped out of MIT to focus on a secure electronic payment system he was working on. 32 year old Hastings had similarly dropped out of University of Michigan, reportedly to avoid what he considered an unnecessary elective requirement, and had since made a living as a programmer and playing poker.

The two met in 1998 at a cryptographic finance conference on the island of Anguilla. Hastings was living in Anguilla at the time, having founded data haven company IsleByte. Anguilla had natural advantages for a person looking to host a secure data facility. In addition to having strict secrecy laws, the island nation was not signatory to the Berne Convention which required most countries to take an active role in protecting intellectual property ownership. Although this made a strong case for clients who could make use of such a situation, Hastings ultimately found that the law was in other ways too restrictive for the long term success of the venture. For instance, both gambling and explicit adult materials were illegal within the country, conflicting with two of the most potentially motivated users of the services.

Heading back to the United States, Hastings and Lackey began their search for a new data haven location. Eventually, they read about Sealand in the Erwin Strauss book How to Build Your Own Country (which is available digitally on Amazon, link in description) and resonated with the bold attitude and daring bravado of the Bates family. From here they would approach the Bateses with a proposal for a new business - HavenCo.

Computer servers would be installed and secured in the legs which supported the tower structure. Connection was meant to be ensured by several redundant and independent means including an underwater fiber optic cable and satellite connection, as well as backup emergency generators for continued power operation.

But as internet security experts would know, data cannot be completely secure from infiltration if the computers themselves aren't physically secured. And for this they had a plan. The air in the computer rooms was to be flushed and filled entirely with nitrogen, requiring SCUBA gear for access and entry. But they also had plans to prevent would-be invaders from even getting that far. Topside defenses were to include .50 caliber machine guns, as the tower hosted decades before to defend from air attacks in the second world war. Other planned armaments reportedly included magnetic mines to defend from attack boats, and self-destruct features on the servers themselves.

They claimed to take the data security so seriously, in fact, that they would prefer to destroy a server than hand it over. In an interview with Wired, Lackey stated: "We’d power off the machine, optionally destroy it, possibly turn over the smoking wreck to the attacker, and securely and anonymously refund payment to the owner of the server.”

The proposed list of clients for these services included everything from governments in exile to gambling and adult content sites. But naturally, this set of services ran the risk of attracting more nefarious users. Although HavenCo planned to be free of national law, there were certain things they wouldn't tolerate: explicit material involving children, drug money laundering, hacking, and other such things. Although some of these rules were simply pragmatic in not turning HavenCo or Sealand into a target, the creators also saw the data haven as a platform for the free exchange of information and activities which might be called "victimless crimes" - not for acts which would have resulted in harm to another. Clearly, they didn't include so-called "moral crimes" or intellectual property violations among this definition.

To launch HavenCo, the two reportedly managed to obtain $1 million in seed funding. Notably, the donors included Joi Ito, an influential entrepreneur and venture capitalist in the tech industry who would go on to become the director of MIT's Media Lab and serve on a number of boards such as Creative Commons, the Open Source Initiative, and the Mozilla Foundation. As a notable aside, Ito would resign from MIT and several other organizations when it was discovered that he had financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein which he had taken steps to conceal. While a link can't be drawn explicitly between this relationship and the interest in financing an offshore data haven, it does illustrate how the relationship between data freedom advocacy and nefarious interests can be uncomfortably close even in the best of circumstances.

Having gained some backing and momentum, HavenCo started chasing down interviews, cover articles, potential client meetings, and anything else that could give them the publicity they needed. However, in spite of all of this, little ever actually materialized of HavenCo. Hastings left the company in 2000 for reasons which have still not been explicitly stated, leaving Lackey alone as the sole technically competent worker on the platform. Although initially on the same page, Lackey and the Bateses didn't seem to see eye to eye on how the data center should be used. Knowing that nobody in the family had strong computer skills, Lackey started implementing his own features and experiments without the knowledge and permission of Sealand, leading Michael to make a comparison to "Doctor Evil in his lair." The final conflict came when HavenCo was approached with a service which would try to escape video distribution laws by buying copies of DVDs and streaming them to one viewer at a time. Sealand would refuse to host the service, ostensibly afraid of antagonizing the English authorities.

Seemingly done trying to make things work, Lackey would take a deal to be bought out of his entire involvement in HavenCo for $220,000 - the amount of money he had put in as an initial investment. This effectively constituted a nationalization of HavenCo by the Principality of Sealand, who continued to operate the site under much more restrictive terms of service for several years until it went down for good in 2008.

Speaking at the security conference DefCon in 2003, Hastings explained that HavenCo's major issue had been too much time gathering publicity and not enough effort actually engaging in the business side of the business. As he explained it, every member of the team was busy taking interviews and meeting clients, but nobody was doing the work of closing sales or even keeping up with any form of ticketing system which would help keep them on track. There were other issues, as well. The company providing their fiber optic link went bankrupt in the dot-com boom, severing that service and leaving them reliant on a satellite connection alone. This connection was also the target of denial of service attacks, which would take it down for days at a time. Ultimately the idea of Sealand as a data haven had many disadvantages – such as remote location, harsh environment and extreme cost of transporting even the basic necessities – and the operators were unwilling to go all in on their one claimed advantage of sovereignty and total data freedom.

Although HavenCo had been doomed to failure, it wasn't the last attempt at finding a way to leverage the little bit of sovereignty that many believed Sealand could still assert. In 2007, torrenting website The Pirate Bay had had its servers closed down in Sweden, and it was looking for a new hosting location. They launched a website with a fundraising campaign, buysealand.com.

Reportedly, the rulers of Sealand had been amenable to transferring ownership for the bargain price of $65 million dollars. The Buy Sealand effort announced that the money raised would go towards purchasing the island, but in the case the purchase fell through, the money would be diverted into buying a small uninhabited island and declaring it a sovereign country. On January 15th of 2007, Buy Sealand announced that negotiations were ongoing. A forum had been set up to determine how the country should be run. Nine days later, on January 24th, a new post on the website announced that Sealand had stopped returning emails and the secondary plan to buy a private island would be moving forward. This is the last update available on the Wayback Machine before a short message that the site will be moving, and then the domain appears to have turned into a series of SEO stuffing pages and other less-than-honest websites. Amusingly, the forum categories and thread titles are still available on the Wayback machine so you can scroll through and get some idea of the topics of conversation, though the actual conversations themselves were unfortunately not archived. At the time of the last update, the running donation counter on the page showed just over $20,000.

For a brief period of time following this, there was talk of moving the infamous Wikileaks site to Sealand. This was widely discussed and it's easy to find a number of articles on the subject, but little ever materialized past news pieces and the occasional interview.

Where Are They Now?

Prince Roy Bates died, aged 91, on October 9, 2012. Although many large organizations had always viewed his Sealand adventures with an air of skepticism and bemusement, it's apparent from coverage of his death that there was a shared respect for the ambition and vigor with which he lived his life. At one point, he was quoted as saying, "We may die rich. We may die poor. But we certainly shall not die of boredom." Regrettably, as his son Prince Michael says, Roy spent the last years of his life in a nursing home where he had developed Alzheimer's prior to his passing.

Princess Joan Bates passed a few years later on March 10, 2016, at the age of 86. Although they left behind several generations of descendants, their son Prince Michael is by far the most active in the story of Sealand even to this day. In fact you can find him on Twitter under the tag @SealandPrince. Today the website sealandgov.org still exists to share the history and story of Sealand. Passports and other official documents are no longer issued, but those wanting a little piece of the story can still purchase official titles ranging from $45 USD to become a lord, lady, baron or baroness to over $650 USD to become a Duke or Duchess. Like any good historical site, visitors can also buy gifts including a copy of the Sealand constitution, a personalized coat of arms for the country, flags, and all manner of other memorabilia. At the time of writing there is even a commemorative coin honoring the memory of Princess Joan, although it currently appears to be out of stock.

All that's left beyond that is to catch up with some small and interesting stories which have taken place around Sealand. In 2008, energy drink company Red Bull hosted a skating event on Sealand titled "Skating the world's smallest country". The corresponding video really puts on display just how cramped the micronation is for the skaters, and one even managed to lose a skateboard forever to the waters.

In 2012, the Football team of Sealand (although you'll probably call it soccer if you're in America like me) played their first official game. In 2016, Sealand hosted a half-marathon using a treadmill on the platform's surface. Several celebrities have been honored as dignitaries of the country, including musician Ed Sheeran and cricket player Ben Stokes. The occasional concert or movie feature has been discussed, but many of these ideas have come and passed without being realized.

I’m adding this section in last minute, but literally the day I intended to finalize and record this script, Sealand posted a new video on their YouTube channel. Drawing on experience from their past technological exploits, Sealand hosted an art exhibition for a piece connected to NFT and Cryptocurrency. The specific work, Block 34, was hosted in person on the island. The project is divided into 40 blocks, each tied to a specific location which is meant to tell the history of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. In doing so, Sealand has been recognized as an important place in the history of decentralization and data protection. However, the announcement has drawn almost instant criticism from followers who are quick to point out the environmental impact of NFTs as well as the potential for scams and artist exploitation. The video has only been up for several hours and has already attracted a majority of these comments. The NFT artist, Robert Alice, stated the following on Twitter: “Spent over a year planning this show and three years trying to convince Sealand to do it. I wanted to display NFTs and crypto art in the wildest setting imaginable, to take these stories out of the confines of the screen and into the world.”

This being the case, it appears that Sealand may not be actively pushing to get into NFTs or cryptocurrency but remains open to the economic possibilities involved. In this way, a parallel could be drawn to the earlier days of pirate radio and selling advertising slots to distribute to the public, rather than actually being involved themselves. But followers of Sealand with strong opinions on NFTs will have to decide for themselves whether they see this as taking an active involvement in the practice, or simply renting out their venue to a motivated buyer.

Today, Sealand stands in name and in structure and seems to have softened its rebellious nature. It remains a monument both physically and symbolically to a time when the last adherents of seafaring adventurism were keeping the spirit alive, anachronisms even in their own time. It's a story few of us could imagine today and almost certainly represents an era now lost to us. But for a handful of people living life in their own way and a rusty old tower that would have drawn little attention otherwise, the stories involved there have become larger than anyone could imagine and still capture admiration today.

A Note on Sources

I try to be really conscious of taking in multiple viewpoints whenever I discuss a topic, trying not to take from one work so heavily as to recreate it and to consider the available viewpoints carefully.

In researching my script for this video, one source stands out absolutely above and beyond almost every other I encountered. This is James Grimmelman's 80-page article Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law which was published in the University of Illinois Law Review. Grimmelman, an Associate Professor of Law at New York Law School, spent several years studying the history of Sealand and gathering obscure sources ranging from unsealed government documents to obscure old newspapers and films. The article is incredibly meticulously sourced and references so many original documents that are difficult to access today. I've leaned on this article heavily in my reading to inform the best-understood sequence of events and guide my interpretation of other sources. The article was foundational to being able to construct a write-up with any sense of stability about a story which has many vagaries and likely exaggerations. This, along with my other sources, you'll find linked in the description. There's no way to have covered every detail or angle of this story, so if any particular part interests you I encourage you to make use of those sources to dig more into the specifics. As always, comments and questions are encouraged and welcomed. If you've made it this far, thanks for sharing this much of your time with me to cover this unique and fascinating part of history. Until next time, it's been a pleasure as always. Thank you.