ABSTRACT
David Sutch and Reg Calvert had been the first offshore entrepreneurs to squat the old abandoned wartime forts in the Thames estuary, but from very early on there was keen competition for the use of these facilities. There were few of the prohibitive costs and technical hindrances which made ships so expensive to maintain, and therefore the sea forts, by whatever means they were acquired, were at a premium. In February 1965 Reg Calvert announced that he was planning to expand his network by starting a new station on the as yet unoccupied Knock John fort. As the fledgling Radio Essex project also had an interest in this site it turned out to be the cue for several months of aggressive raids and counter-raids on the fort. The Radio Essex team eventually won the series of skirmishes and began broadcasting from Knock John in November 1965. Both the popular and provincial press tended to treat all this maritime gazumping as a joke. Calvert and Sutch had always appealed to Fleet Street’s desire for a novelty angle on the pirates, instigating various publicity schemes and stunts to keep their small station in the public eye, but the battle for the forts had its more sinister episodes. Writing after the apparently accidental death by drowning of the Radio Invicta boss Tom Pepper, and the subsequent takeover by KING Radio, the former Radio City DJ Rick Michaels revealed:
An air of mystery surrounds the operation of Radio King. The author was invited to join an elaborate plot to seize Radio King during the summer of 1965 by a former member of Radio Invicta and Radio King, who claimed the operators of the station owed them money, and 169moreover the station was about to change hands illegally. They planned to use a chartered helicopter to seize the fort. It was also mentioned in passing that Tom Pepper’s death may have been something other than an accident. 1
