Maunsell Forts
Encyclopedia
The Maunsell Forts were small fortified towers built in the Thames
and Mersey
estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom
. They were named after their designer, Guy Maunsell
. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities. One became the Principality of Sealand
; boats visit the remaining forts occasionally, and a consortium called Project Redsands is planning to conserve the fort situated at Redsand.
Maunsell sea forts, built in the Thames estuary
and operated by the Royal Navy
, were to deter and report German air raid
s following the Thames as a landmark
, and attempts to lay mines
by aircraft in this important shipping channel.
There were four naval forts:
The design was a concrete construction; a pontoon barge on which stood two cylindrical towers on top of which was the gun platform mounting two 3.75-inch guns and two 40 mm Bofors guns
. They were laid down in dry dock and assembled as complete units. They were then fitted out — the crews going on board at the same time for familiarisation — before being towed out and sunk onto their sand bank positions in 1942.
The naval fort design was the latest of several that Maunsell had devised in response to Admiralty inquiries. Early ideas had considered forts in the English Channel
able to take on enemy vessels.
. These were larger installations comprising seven interconnected steel platforms, five carried guns arranged in a semicircle around the control centre and accommodation while the seventh, set further out than the gun towers, was the searchlight tower.
Three forts were placed in the Mersey
and three in the Thames estuary
:
Each of these AA forts carried four QF 3.75 inch guns and two Bofors 40 mm guns. During the war the forts shot down 22 aircraft and about 30 flying bomb
s. They were decommissioned by the MoD in the late 1950s.
ship Baalbek collided with it, destroying two of the towers, killing four civilians and destroying guns, radar equipment and supplies. The ruins were considered a hazard to shipping and dismantled in 1959–60. Parts of the bases were towed ashore by the Cliffe fort at Alpha wharf near the village of Cliffe, Kent
, where they remain easily seen.
One of the Shivering Sands towers was lost in 1963 after a ship collided with it. In 1964 the Port of London Authority
placed wind and tide monitoring equipment on the Shivering Sands searchlight tower, which was isolated from the rest of the fort by the demolished tower. This relayed data to the mainland via a radio link.
Sunk Head was destroyed by the Royal Engineers
in the late 1960s. Tongue Fort collapsed in a storm in 1996.
In August and September 2005, artist Stephen Turner spent six weeks living alone in the searchlight tower of the Shivering Sands Fort in what he described as "an artistic exploration of isolation, investigating how one's experience of time changes in isolation, and what creative contemplation means in a 21st-century context".
in the mid-1960s.
In 1964, a few months after Radio Caroline
went on air, Screaming Lord Sutch
set up Radio Sutch in one of the towers at Shivering Sands. Sutch soon became bored with the project and sold the station to his manager Reginald Calvert
who renamed the station Radio City
and expanded operations into all of the five towers that remained connected. Calvert's killing in a dispute over the station's ownership (found to be self-defence rather than murder) contributed to the Government passing legislation against the pirates in 1967.
During the pirate era the Port of London Authority frequently complained that its monitoring radio link was being disrupted by the nearby Radio City transmitter.
Red Sands was likewise occupied by Radio Invicta, later named KING Radio, before Ted Allbeury turned it into a professional-sounding easy listening
station called Radio 390
, after its wavelength
of approximately 390 metres. The 1965 Danger Man
episode "Not-so-Jolly Roger" was partly filmed at Redsands and includes an acknowledgement to Radio 390 in its closing credits. Also filmed at the Red Sand forts was the 1968 Doctor Who
serial Fury from the Deep
, in which the complex stood in for a North Sea
gas
refinery besieged by an intelligent seaweed
creature.
The size of the Army forts made them ideal antenna
platforms, since a large antenna could be based on the central tower and guyed from the surrounding towers.
A small group of radio enthusiasts set up Radio Tower on Sunk Head Naval fort, but the station was run on a shoestring, had very poor coverage and lasted only a few months. Claims by the company that they also intended to run a television service were never credible.
Paddy Roy Bates
occupied the Rough Sands Fort and set up Radio Essex, later renamed BBMS — Britain's Better Music Station — but is better known for his post-pirate activities. He, or a representative, has lived in Roughs Tower since 1964, self-styling the tower as the Principality of Sealand
.
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
and Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. They were named after their designer, Guy Maunsell
Guy Maunsell
Guy Anson Maunsell was the British civil engineer responsible for the design of the World War II Naval Sea Forts and Army Forts used by the United Kingdom for the defence of the Thames and Mersey estuaries....
. The forts were decommissioned in the late 1950s and later used for other activities. One became the Principality of Sealand
Principality of Sealand
The Principality of Sealand is an unrecognized entity, located on HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea 10 km off the coast of Suffolk, England, United Kingdom ....
; boats visit the remaining forts occasionally, and a consortium called Project Redsands is planning to conserve the fort situated at Redsand.
Maunsell sea forts
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
and operated by the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
, were to deter and report German air raid
Strategic bombing
Strategic bombing is a military strategy used in a total war with the goal of defeating an enemy nation-state by destroying its economic ability and public will to wage war rather than destroying its land or naval forces...
s following the Thames as a landmark
Landmark
This is a list of landmarks around the world.Landmarks may be split into two categories - natural phenomena and man-made features, like buildings, bridges, statues, public squares and so forth...
, and attempts to lay mines
Naval mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, an enemy vessel...
by aircraft in this important shipping channel.
There were four naval forts:
- Rough Sands (HM Fort RoughsHM Fort RoughsHM Fort Roughs was one of several World War II installations, that were designed by Guy Maunsell and known collectively as His Majesty's Forts or as Maunsell Sea Forts, and its purpose was to guard the port of Harwich, Essex...
) (U1) - Sunk Head (U2)
- Tongue Sands (U3)
- Knock John (U4)
The design was a concrete construction; a pontoon barge on which stood two cylindrical towers on top of which was the gun platform mounting two 3.75-inch guns and two 40 mm Bofors guns
Bofors 40 mm gun
The Bofors 40 mm gun is an anti-aircraft autocannon designed by the Swedish defence firm of Bofors Defence...
. They were laid down in dry dock and assembled as complete units. They were then fitted out — the crews going on board at the same time for familiarisation — before being towed out and sunk onto their sand bank positions in 1942.
The naval fort design was the latest of several that Maunsell had devised in response to Admiralty inquiries. Early ideas had considered forts in the English Channel
English Channel
The English Channel , often referred to simply as the Channel, is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates southern England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest to in the Strait of Dover...
able to take on enemy vessels.
Maunsell army forts
Maunsell also designed forts for anti-aircraft defenceAnti-aircraft warfare
NATO defines air defence as "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action." They include ground and air based weapon systems, associated sensor systems, command and control arrangements and passive measures. It may be to protect naval, ground and air forces...
. These were larger installations comprising seven interconnected steel platforms, five carried guns arranged in a semicircle around the control centre and accommodation while the seventh, set further out than the gun towers, was the searchlight tower.
Three forts were placed in the Mersey
River Mersey
The River Mersey is a river in North West England. It is around long, stretching from Stockport, Greater Manchester, and ending at Liverpool Bay, Merseyside. For centuries, it formed part of the ancient county divide between Lancashire and Cheshire....
and three in the Thames estuary
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
:
- Nore (U5),
- Red Sands (U6)
- Shivering Sands (U7)Shivering Sands Army FortShivering Sands Army Fort [U7] was a Maunsell army fort built near the Thames estuary for anti-aircraft defence. It is made up of several once interconnected towers north of Herne Bay and is 9.2 miles from the nearest land. They can be viewed from Shoeburyness East Beach on clear, cloudless summer...
.
Each of these AA forts carried four QF 3.75 inch guns and two Bofors 40 mm guns. During the war the forts shot down 22 aircraft and about 30 flying bomb
Flying bomb
A flying bomb is a manned or unmanned aerial vehicle or aircraft carrying a large explosive warhead, a precursor to contemporary cruise missiles...
s. They were decommissioned by the MoD in the late 1950s.
Fort histories
Nore Army Fort was badly damaged in 1953 when the NorwegianNorway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
ship Baalbek collided with it, destroying two of the towers, killing four civilians and destroying guns, radar equipment and supplies. The ruins were considered a hazard to shipping and dismantled in 1959–60. Parts of the bases were towed ashore by the Cliffe fort at Alpha wharf near the village of Cliffe, Kent
Cliffe, Kent
Cliffe is a village on the Hoo peninsula in Kent, England, reached from the Medway Towns by a three-mile journey along the B2000. Situated upon a low chalk escarpment overlooking the Thames marshes, Cliffe offers the adventurous rambler views of Southend-on-Sea and London...
, where they remain easily seen.
One of the Shivering Sands towers was lost in 1963 after a ship collided with it. In 1964 the Port of London Authority
Port of London Authority
The Port of London Authority is a self-funding public trust established in 1908 by the Port of London Act to govern the Port of London. Its responsibility extends over the Tideway of the River Thames and the authority is responsible for the public right of navigation and for conservancy of the...
placed wind and tide monitoring equipment on the Shivering Sands searchlight tower, which was isolated from the rest of the fort by the demolished tower. This relayed data to the mainland via a radio link.
Sunk Head was destroyed by the Royal Engineers
Royal Engineers
The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....
in the late 1960s. Tongue Fort collapsed in a storm in 1996.
In August and September 2005, artist Stephen Turner spent six weeks living alone in the searchlight tower of the Shivering Sands Fort in what he described as "an artistic exploration of isolation, investigating how one's experience of time changes in isolation, and what creative contemplation means in a 21st-century context".
Pirate radio stations
Various forts were re-occupied for pirate radioUK pirate radio
UK pirate radio was popular in the 1960s and experienced another surge of interest in the 1980s. There are currently an estimated 150 pirate radio stations in the UK...
in the mid-1960s.
In 1964, a few months after Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline
Radio Caroline is an English radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly...
went on air, Screaming Lord Sutch
Screaming Lord Sutch
David Edward Sutch , also known as "Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow", or simply "Screaming Lord Sutch", was a musician from the United Kingdom...
set up Radio Sutch in one of the towers at Shivering Sands. Sutch soon became bored with the project and sold the station to his manager Reginald Calvert
Reginald Calvert
Reginald Calvert was the manager of The Fortunes pop group and singer Screaming Lord Sutch, and the owner of offshore pirate radio station Radio City....
who renamed the station Radio City
Radio City (pirate radio station)
Radio City was a British pirate radio station that broadcast from Shivering Sands Army Fort, one of the abandoned Second World War Maunsell Sea Forts in the Thames Estuary.- Origins :...
and expanded operations into all of the five towers that remained connected. Calvert's killing in a dispute over the station's ownership (found to be self-defence rather than murder) contributed to the Government passing legislation against the pirates in 1967.
During the pirate era the Port of London Authority frequently complained that its monitoring radio link was being disrupted by the nearby Radio City transmitter.
Red Sands was likewise occupied by Radio Invicta, later named KING Radio, before Ted Allbeury turned it into a professional-sounding easy listening
Easy listening
Easy listening is a broad style of popular music and radio format that emerged in the 1950s, evolving out of big band music, and related to MOR music as played on many AM radio stations. It encompasses the exotica, beautiful music, light music, lounge music, ambient music, and space age pop genres...
station called Radio 390
Radio 390
Radio 390 was a pirate radio station which operated from Red Sands Fort, near Whitstable), a former Maunsell Fort located on the Red Sands sandbar....
, after its wavelength
Wavelength
In physics, the wavelength of a sinusoidal wave is the spatial period of the wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.It is usually determined by considering the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase, such as crests, troughs, or zero crossings, and is a...
of approximately 390 metres. The 1965 Danger Man
Danger Man
Danger Man is a British television series that was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the program and wrote many of the scripts...
episode "Not-so-Jolly Roger" was partly filmed at Redsands and includes an acknowledgement to Radio 390 in its closing credits. Also filmed at the Red Sand forts was the 1968 Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
serial Fury from the Deep
Fury from the Deep
Fury from the Deep is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in six weekly parts from 16 March to 20 April 1968...
, in which the complex stood in for a North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...
gas
Natural gas
Natural gas is a naturally occurring gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, typically with 0–20% higher hydrocarbons . It is found associated with other hydrocarbon fuel, in coal beds, as methane clathrates, and is an important fuel source and a major feedstock for fertilizers.Most natural...
refinery besieged by an intelligent seaweed
Seaweed
Seaweed is a loose, colloquial term encompassing macroscopic, multicellular, benthic marine algae. The term includes some members of the red, brown and green algae...
creature.
The size of the Army forts made them ideal antenna
Antenna (radio)
An antenna is an electrical device which converts electric currents into radio waves, and vice versa. It is usually used with a radio transmitter or radio receiver...
platforms, since a large antenna could be based on the central tower and guyed from the surrounding towers.
A small group of radio enthusiasts set up Radio Tower on Sunk Head Naval fort, but the station was run on a shoestring, had very poor coverage and lasted only a few months. Claims by the company that they also intended to run a television service were never credible.
Paddy Roy Bates
Paddy Roy Bates
- Titles and styles :*2 September 1967–present: His Royal Highness the Prince of Sealand- Full title as Prince :His Royal Highness Roy Bates, Prince of Sealand- References :...
occupied the Rough Sands Fort and set up Radio Essex, later renamed BBMS — Britain's Better Music Station — but is better known for his post-pirate activities. He, or a representative, has lived in Roughs Tower since 1964, self-styling the tower as the Principality of Sealand
Principality of Sealand
The Principality of Sealand is an unrecognized entity, located on HM Fort Roughs, a former World War II Maunsell Sea Fort in the North Sea 10 km off the coast of Suffolk, England, United Kingdom ....
.
Further reading
- Turner, Frank R., The Maunsell Sea Forts (3 volumes, ISBN 0-9524303-0-4; ISBN 0-9524303-1-2; ISBN 0-9524303-7-1). Gravesend: Published by the author, 1994–1996.
- Kauffmann, J.E. and Jurga, Robert M. Fortress Europe: European Fortifications of World War II, Da Capo Press, 2002. ISBN 0-306-81174-X
External links
- Guide to Sea Forts from HerneBayOnline
- Project Redsand from project-redsand.com
- Maunsell Towers from undergroundkent.co.uk
- Map of the Forts from BenvenutiaSealand.it (English version via Google Translate)