The caretakers of Sealand, the most stubborn micronation | Hacker News Reader

The caretakers of Sealand, the most stubborn micronation

atlasobscura.com

155 pointsstevekemp58 comments

Less detailed, but Wikipedia has a nice overview [0] of some things this only glossed over:

> In August 1978, Alexander Achenbach, who describes himself as the Prime Minister of Sealand, hired several German and Dutch mercenaries to lead an attack on Sealand while Bates and his wife were in England.

…

> Germany then sent a diplomat from its London embassy to Sealand to negotiate for Achenbach's release. Roy Bates relented after several weeks of negotiations and subsequently claimed that the diplomat's visit constituted de facto recognition of Sealand by Germany.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

Don't forget HN's very own RDL that ran HavenCo from there:

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rdl

I still think a country is the ultimate start-up.

Seems like Musk agrees but is going planetary.

I wish him well but AFAIK all struggles for independence ultimately boil down to military ability, regardless of any treaties and agreements.

Pretty hard to shake your military stick at someone on Mars. He has already shown he can do weapons development too.

Pre-SpaceX NASA was able to send multiple rovers to Mars so it seems yesterdays technology is already sufficient to nuke Mars.

I wonder why it needs to qualify the title of "the Prime Minister of Sealand" with the statement "who describes himself as the..."

That one issue alone seems to encapsulate this whole topic altogether.

I mean he established the Sealand Rebel Government as Government in Exile in Germany. I feel for an unrecgonized nation’s unrecognized rebel government "describes himself as" is very fitting ;)

To be fair, is that really any different than any other government setup? They're all social institutions. Which is rather the point of micro-nations, I believe.

Hijack for good:

If you guys love this story, read this: https://www.amazon.com/Unruly-Places-Spaces-Inscrutable-Geog...

Its a book about places with odd borders, histories and futures that is tantalizing.

The full Sealand story is told here an its breathtaking.

In a bit of synchronicity, my step son bought me a nice father's day present, a lordship of Sealand, so I am now Lord Darren Jones - although I'm not sure how far I can abuse this title... The document looks highly official though!

I was looking at those "buy one square foot of Scotland so you can be a lord" scams when I stumbled across the Sealand lordships, then immediately bought one for a friend.

Given the options of a fake title in a real country or a real title in an iffy country, the choice was clear.

I bought a ranch on Mercury about 30 years ago!

The seller was the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and I was glad to support their educational program by purchasing my ranch.

https://astrosociety.org/

I got a nice glossy photo of my ranch and a quitclaim deed. I wish I still had them - they seem to have been lost in a move long ago.

Maybe some squatters will move in now, but honestly they are welcome to it. My ranch is on the hot side of the planet, and I don't really like warm weather.

If the squatters send me some photos I will consider that adequate compensation.

There's a good writeup in this book:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/GllWkewypw4C?hl=en&gb...

(Scroll up one page to see one of the quitclaim deeds.)

Greetings fellow Lord of Sealand. I recently received my certificate also. It's a nice touch that the certificate is mailed using a postage stamp created by Sealand itself!

Next step ordained church of the subgenius minister!

Or the 'Universal Life Church,' you just need to fill out a form on their page to get your diploma. You'll be an ordained minister with great powers; sign up today. 10/10 would next -> next -> next again. It's really that easy.

Wow, I never thought I'd see you here of all places but it makes sense. Fellow catholic minister from the ULC living in Canada.

Recently celebrated my sixth year: https://i.imgur.com/QkKV0Kc.jpg

Definitely worth it.

Interesting but I got eternal salvation or double my money back plus more hedonism with the subgenius’.

You can skip all that and just become a P.O.E.E Pope, just print out the card, easy.

Which reminds me of the guy who created The Kingdom of North Sudan as a birthday present for his daughter. Which I was going to link to the story of, but along the way found this more interesting write-up[1] about the disputed region that became the Kingdom.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the...

If you fly on British Airways, their passenger identity page has a menu that includes titles: Lord, Lady, Dame, etc. Of course, you must use this power for good ...

Years ago I chuckled to myself when I selected Admiral from a dropdown when buying tickets for a gig.

Tickets arrived fine, went to gig, etc.

But the events company must have sold my data in a big way, because for years later my parents continued to get all sorts of junk mail to the admiral of the house.

I (jokinglyl selected Sir for a ferry crossing from Portsmouth to St Malo. Months later, forgetting all about it, my family and I are welcomed aboard by the second in command. He looked puzzled. I realized the reason for the welcome a few days later.

Heh, maybe the EU could recognize Sealand and suddenly the 12 mile zone would work the other way... It would also save them having to re-make a lot of flags.

Nice idea. Half the UK population could apply for dual British/Sealand nationality and still be in the EU.

It would get pretty crowded there. Just storing the physical copies of the files may require adding an extension to Sealand :)

I feel like in 2020 we shouldn't even bother with pretending that any bits are physically inside Sealand, it's all in AWS or Azure or whatever anyway, right?

Could make a second Sealand, so you could be a Lord of Boogaloo.

I get the feeling most micronations are pretty stubborn:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Hutt_River

Some not-so-micro nations exist briefly: declare independence from a former sovereign, then vote to be annexed by a new one.

Although the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Hawaii lasted a few years, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Republic was in existence for under a month.

The most recent example is probably Crimea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Crimea#Declaration...

Texas is probably the best example, but they existed as a republic for 10 years.

I think this is a good article on the theory of law and how it's quite paradoxical -

Sealand, HavenCo, and the Rule of Law - James Grimmelmann

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

Seems interesting, but that's got to be the worst footnote practice I've ever seen: notes 2 and 3 are used to reference something like 30 separate publications, along with maybe two comment, using only two very long sentences set in small font.

Ugh, what a crime against typography.

That photo of the Bateses still manages to look futuristic, and that was 1979. Good style never gets old.

I'd say straight up James Bond movie villain.

Good to see it's still a going concern.

It is surprising that there haven't been any more incursions by either government or privateers given that it seems its only guarded by one person at any time.

I wonder what state the concrete caissons are in. Maybe the sea will reclaim Sealand in the end as it probably will not be easy or cheap to repair.

It isn't worth any government doing anything about so long as they don't do the types of things that a pirate would want to do. Thus it isn't interesting for pirates as it doesn't really give them anything more and a fixed location is a liability.

Indeed. And I imagine the political cost of taking it over is low, and as a starting place for an extralegal operation, the value of it is high.

Presuming Sealand continues to be understood as outside the UK's jurisdiction, I imagine the right motivated investor could actually expand Sealand into a larger artificial body.

A bit of "legal realism" here: if someone takes over Sealand and starts expanding it and doing anything the UK doesn't like, they will simply put a stop to it. International law only matters insofar as other nations are willing to use it, and nobody will care enough about Sealand.

Sure, but to what extent could they operate without upsetting the UK? Some tax-free tourism? Probably get away with it. Running some sort of Epcot/Sidewalk Labs-esque experimental town on "land" nobody cares about... probably also workable.

As long as it doesn't pose a danger to the UK and isn't distinctly criminal in nature, it's probably not going to get much attention.

This article sounds super interesting, but Atlas Obscura has an obnoxious (and illegal in the EU) cookie wall. Are there any other sources?

http://archive.today/wEMn8

There are technical solutions to this that allow you to still read the article, you know.

Hilarious stuff!

You can call yourself a nation, but if the only reason you exist is the fact that the price of the fuel needed to ferry a police officer to your location and arrest you is more than what your country is worth, you're not a nation.

Note that Sealand is outside of the UK's territorial waters. Technically speaking, that police officer can't legally arrest anyone on Sealand.

Micronations tend to be declared in spots where to do geographic and legal oddity, no larger jurisdiction actually applies.

In 1987, the UK extended their territorial waters to 12 miles, which encompasses Sealand.

But it doesn't work that way.

If there's an entity already there, then the difference is split. You can't just extend your territorial jurisdiction and take over another country.

But that's begging the question, isn't it? If the UK recognizes Sealand as another country, then of course the difference is split. But the UK clearly doesn't, so it will just consider Sealand part of its territorial waters, and every other country (that doesn't recognize Sealand) will side with UK here.

"You can't just extend your territorial jurisdiction and take over another country."

laughs in british

The UK argues that nobody recognised Sealand as a legitimate entity so there's no dispute. I'm not aware of any other countries officially recognizing Sealand as a sovereign nation before the border change.

There are 2 famous cases in the recent history, one is Russia in Crimea and another one was supposed to start yesterday near the Dead Sea. Big fish eats small fish.

Of course you can. There might be consequences, of course, but in the case of Sealand it's very unlikely any other nation will care enough to do anything.

By that metric there's a few macro nations that are "not a nation".

With larger nations, there's also the cost of searching for the fugitive and also of dealing with the foreign nation itself (vis a vis police, military, etc).

It's more than the cost of getting there.

Sealand can be "conquered" on a whim. It exists solely at the pleasure of the UK.

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