Talk:HM Fort Roughs

New discussion
The first Talk page was of excessive length and it has now been archived. In order to clean this article up I have removed it from the controversial position in which it found itself, since it had become isolated as an orphan. Because I began the article (see the history of my numerous original edits), and because no one else wants to clean it up, I have removed all of the controversial lead-in material and I will rewrite the rest so that it is a history of HM Fort Roughs: how it began and what happened to it. It is being rewritten as an article about British history and a British Royal Navy installation situated on British territory and regulated by British laws, all of which are or will be documented and referenced and footnoted. I will gladly answer any specific question about any of the factual parts of the article that I have written. I do not wish to get into personal disputes of any sort. If you have a question about anything that I have written, please ask about that item and I will do my very best to answer in a cordial, friendly and factual manner. I would appreciate the same response. Thank you. MPLX/MH 05:08, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Please mention Sealand in the lead section. Thank you. Rhobite 05:11, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * May I bow to you and ask you to perform same? It might be helpful in order to avoid more controversy after attempting to defuse the same. MPLX/MH 05:19, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I figured you'd revert it or something if I added it. I hate to start this argument all over again, but this article looks an awful lot like a fork, sans Bates. Rhobite 05:25, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)
 * What I am attempting to do is to remove all controversy concerning micronation status and just deal with the plain history of this installation. I noticed that since objections have ceased the fantasy has taken over the other article which contains a lot of non-factual details (such as the installation being abandoned after WWII and Bates being the first to occupy it. There were other squatters there before him and he threw them off.) My intention is to stay in the world of the United Kingdom and real law on this article, which is why I offered to defend any specific statements (or, if I cannot support them, I will gladly remove them.) I just don't want to get into time-wasting nonsense which is why I asked you to perform the task you suggested, in order that whatever is written - I didn't write it! I just trust to your wisdom and common sense to try to keep this article on the straight and narrow path of documentation. MPLX/MH 05:44, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I think it is a good idea to deal with Roughs Tower seperately from the Principality of Sealand.  When I first learned of the existence of Sealand I was quite curious and requested information from them.  I recieved signed letters and pictures from the Prince Regent, which is kind of cool. Regardless of all of that, Roughs Tower was designed to be a military installation and I think that this history is quite valuable and separate from the history of Sealand.  We must understand why this big chunk of iron is out at sea to begin with to know what the heck they are trying to establish today. Rowlan 14:20, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
 * That's what the Maunsell Sea Forts article is for. We currently have at least 5 sloppy articles on these subjects, which could easily be 3 articles (Sealand, Mr Bates & his pirate radio station, the forts). --kingboyk 21:44, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Removed Text
I've been busy merging and consolidating articles. A lot of redundant, competitive material has gone, and we have some slicker articles now. However, I didn't find a home for this paragraph which I have just removed from HM Fort Roughs. It clearly doesn't belong there, as it's not about the fort per se, it's about sovereignity (Sealand) or Radio Caroline and related ventures. The info also happens to be unsourced. I'm posting it here so that an interested party can place it in the correct article (but not back into HM Fort Roughs please!)


 * The history of contemporary claims* appears to have begun with people associated with Alan Crawford who started Radio Atlanta which later became a part of the Radio Caroline network owned by Ronan O'Rahilly. Alan Crawford outlined a scheme to turn a sandbar into an artificial island using junk cars filled with concrete as a means of holding added landfill in place.

* of sovereignity over man-made structures in the sea by pirate radio operators

--kingboyk 01:37, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Photographs of Sealand
I found this support cross section picture rather interesting and if it's avalable for upload to wiki then somone should add it>


 * http://www.seanhastings.com/havenco/sealand/index2.html
 * http://www.seanhastings.com/havenco/sealand/crosssection.jpg

Photo of the Inside the support leg. It appears to be living quarters
 * http://www.gunfleet.com/page6/files/page6-1112-full.html

More pictures of Sealand and Roughs Tower are mixed in here: http://www.gunfleet.com/page6/page6.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.125.89.33 (talk) 06:43, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


 * These are all dead links leading to spam dens Santamoly (talk) 17:08, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Relevance of detail
I'm wondering if much of the detail here would better belong in Principality of Sealand, Legal status of Sealand, or Radio Essex (pirate radio station), or be deleted as excessive detail for a general enyclopedia. My feeling is that this article should concentrate on the platform itself (and could even be merged into Maunsell Forts). Right now it has a lot of info on law, pirate radio and Radio Essex, some of which is duplicated elsewhere, and much of which isn't totally on topic.

Please see Talk:Principality_of_Sealand. --kingboyk (talk) 15:49, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be because this article was originally called "Sealand: A Legal History". Deffo need to get some of this material into a Radio Essex article, some of it into Sealand articles, and some of it zapped pronto... leaving a nice article on the construction and wartime use of the fort and a potted history of it's post war life. --kingboyk (talk) 14:07, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
 * A lot of this has absolutely no relevance to HM Fort Roughs. I am going to delete the information that has no relevance, and anything that needs to be added to the other articles can be found in the history page of this article. Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk) 10:28, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Rewritten
I have rewritten the article, as it is about the fort itself. It now recounts the history of the fort up to 1967 when the Principality of Sealand was founded - after that it becomes part of the history of Sealand. Onecanadasquarebishopsgate (talk) 10:59, 20 December 2007 (UTC)


 * I disagree with this heavy-handed approach. Modern uses of various forts continue to appear in the articles for those forts. To pretend that there is not a continuing story regarding the Sealand nonsense is an attempt to obfuscate reality (even if it is a preposterous reality). The fort continues to exist. It is now occupied by individuals making the claim to be an independent country. This is part of the modern history of the fort, just as modern changes and uses at various other historical forts belong on their pages, a limited objective account of the current status and uses belongs here as well. To not have it is a glaring omission, and detracts from the article.  71.239.87.100 (talk) 16:51, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Text in diagram too small to read
And it is not possible to click through to a larger version - why cannot it be a .jpg file rather than SVG (whatever that is). 80.0.103.195 (talk) 23:40, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Location
I have moved the location given in the header from the location on OpenStreetMaps to the location (only 160 m away) on maritime charts, and in view of discussions at Talk:Principality_of_Sealand and Talk:Principality_of_Sealand I have added a shortish section explaining the anomalies. But there was some useful info I left out when attempting to condense the section, and in spite of that, someone in the future may consider it too long for the main article and delete it, so here is the original with all the info.

(If anyone wonders how I worked out the distances, I used the FieldenMaps.info site to convert d/m/s coordinates to OS grid refs, and used Pythagoras to calculate the diagonal -- which is pretty close to original research, and while I thought it OK -- simple maths on info from a web site, I didn't fancy justifying it, so another reason why I reduced what I put in the main article.)

The fort can be found online on UK Ordnance Survey maps at grid reference TM3964227615 which, according to FieldenMaps.info corresponds to 51°53′3.9″N 1°28′54.0″E using the WGS84 coordinates normally used for GPS. It is shown about 160 metres from that location in OpenStreetMap, at 51.89439°N, 1.4825°W. However, Bob Le-Roi's Fort Fanatics webpage visited on 28 Sep 2011, states that charts (not available online) show the fort at 51.89517°N, 1.4805°W in WGS coordinates which similarly corresponds to 51°53′3.9″N 1°28′54.0″E 51.8944°N, 1.4825°W, about 90 m away from the OS location and 160 m from the OSM location. Maritime charts are normally considered more authoritative than land maps for location of maritime obstructions, so those coordinates are chosen for this article. OpenStreetMap notes that the structure includes a helipad.

The structure does not appear in the aerial views on Bing Maps, Google Maps or Google Earth. However, neither do the adjacent (somewhat larger) sandbanks at Rough Sands and Cork Sand, or the marker buoys for them. Those photographic services do not guarantee to include items remote from land. Generic "sea" photos may have been used.

Enginear (talk) 22:25, 28 September 2011 (UTC)


 * If you zoom in at the shoreline, you can easily see if the imagery is actually continuing out to sea, or if there is a telltale jagged edge where imagery changes to a generic ocean textured tile. Friecode (talk) 04:18, 18 November 2014 (UTC)

Article needs updating
…to capture the essentials of the current, continuing story of the Fort's use. It's history did not end in I966, any more than did the American St. Augustine and other forts, globally, as their uses have changed, becoming commercial, park-type or other entities. 71.239.87.100 (talk) 16:47, 14 October 2014 (UTC)
 * See also comment made above, in the "Rewritten" section. 71.239.87.100 (talk) 16:52, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Dimensions of HM Fort Roughs
It would be helpful to have dimensions of this sea fort—the height of the towers, their diameters, and the dimensions of the superstructure, so the scale of this endeavor can be appreciated. 71.239.87.100 (talk) 17:04, 14 October 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to move article (rename)
Since this article is about the structure, I think the designation HM as part of the title is slightly misleading. Since being decommissioned/abandoned by the UK Royal Navy, the structure has been referred to as "Fort Roughs Tower", "Fort Roughs", "Roughs Tower", or some combination of the three. Which would be most appropriate for the structure as it is today? Friecode (talk)

Size / Volume / Map
I've been studying this place for a while, and cannot understand the "150-300" people staffing numbers at all. Looking at the picture it looks like a large mobile home on a couple pillars, and even if those pillars were hollow and contained lodgings, I could only picture a few people being in there. Could someone please make this more plausible? Maybe by providing military schematic maps or blueprints or something? Or at least something to make this not seem all fake? Like somehow one guy recaptured the small artificial island from a big group of mercenaries? This whole thing seems like a bit of a fraudulent big-fish tale.... please prove me wrong....
 * 184.66.83.37 (talk) 10:55, 27 August 2018 (UTC)