Famous 1960s Radio Caroline trawler to be saved!

We report on the funds being raised to save the 1960s trawler made famous as the ship from which Radio Caroline was broadcast.

Ross Revenge, the former deep-sea trawler which later found fame as the vessel from which Radio Caroline was broadcast, is the subject of a crowd-funding campaign to raise £125,000 – adding to the £57,000 already raised – to provide partnership funding for a Heritage Lottery application for the finances necessary to dry-dock her and carry out repairs to her hull and superstructure to ensure the vessel’s longer term survival. 

Built in 1960 in Bremerhaven, she was based at Grimsby for most of her fishing career, during which she was also involved in the Cod Wars. As the UK fishing fleet declined, she served briefly as a diving support ship before being sold for scrap in 1983. But she was rescued and started a new career broadcasting pop music as a pirate radio station anchored in the Thames Estuary.

Ross Revenge endured many dramas during her pirate radio career, including the collapse of her radio aerial, which almost sank the ship in the 1987 hurricane; an armed raid by Dutch authorities in 1989 and a grounding on the Goodwin Sands when her anchor chain snapped in 1991. Today she is manned by volunteers and still broadcasts as Radio Caroline.

This news item comes from the latest issue of Ships Monthly, and you can get a money-saving subscription to this magazine simply by clicking HERE