Shivering Sands Army Fort
Encyclopedia
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...
for anti-aircraft defence. It is made up of several once interconnected towers north of Herne Bay
Herne Bay
Herne Bay may refer to one of several places:*Herne Bay, Kent, England*Herne Bay, New Zealand*Riverwood, New South Wales, Australia...
and is 9.2 miles from the nearest land. They can be viewed from Shoeburyness
Shoeburyness
Shoeburyness is a town in southeast Essex, England, situated at the mouth of the river Thames Estuary. It is within the borough of Southend-on-Sea, and is situated at the far east of the borough, around east of Southend town centre...
East Beach on clear, cloudless summer days.
History
The towers were built on land and floated out in 1943. Later in the war the equipment was replaced and removed soon after. The forts were abandoned in 1958. In the 1960s some weatherWeather
Weather is the state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy. Most weather phenomena occur in the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers, generally, to day-to-day temperature and precipitation activity, whereas climate...
equipment was installed in the searchlight
Searchlight
A searchlight is an apparatus that combines a bright light source with some form of curved reflector or other optics to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direction, usually constructed so that it can be swiveled about.-Military use:The Royal Navy used...
tower. On the 7th of June 1963 a boat
Boat
A boat is a watercraft of any size designed to float or plane, to provide passage across water. Usually this water will be inland or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is a...
called the Ribersborg collided with one of the towers, which fell into the sea without harming anyone or sinking the boat.
In 1964 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 (a Pirate radio station
Pirate radio
Pirate radio is illegal or unregulated radio transmission. The term is most commonly used to describe illegal broadcasting for entertainment or political purposes, but is also sometimes used for illegal two-way radio operation...
) on one of the old towers. However, he soon became bored and handed the project 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 then expanded into all five towers that were still connected and called it 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 :...
. After Reg Calvert was killed by Oliver Smedley
Oliver Smedley
Major Oliver Smedley MC was a British businessman involved in classical liberal politics and pirate radio. He was acquitted of the murder of a business rival on the grounds of self-defence.-Military:...
, his wife took over for a short time before the project was stopped and the towers again abandoned.
In 1990 the top of the searchlight tower was cut away so that helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
s could be used to maintain the weather equipment inside. In 1992 it was decided that the tower was no longer necessary for the continued operation of the instruments contained within, and a large buoy
Buoy
A buoy is a floating device that can have many different purposes. It can be anchored or allowed to drift. The word, of Old French or Middle Dutch origin, is now most commonly in UK English, although some orthoepists have traditionally prescribed the pronunciation...
was placed next to the tower for the same purpose.
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".