It was a tease because 'Prince' didn't register with me and what I thought was a connection to containerized cargo. Even more so, because I thought someone connected with containerized cargo had recently passed away, and they weren't a 'Prince'.
Turns out following the tease is worth it because at the end of the link the viewer is treated to a Morning Telegraph obit about someone who could only exist across the pond and who could only be remembered by the Morning Telegraph. We don't grow people like Prince Roy. His obit is an export.
The new form of journalism that combines words with great pictures does auger well for online newspapering.
Thus we see Prince Roy, with his lovely wife Joan, in the preserved phase of their lives in a lovely room that looks like it's where Midsomer Mystery's detective Tom Barnaby has held an 'murder inquiry.' No one's in pajamas, and there's not cell phone or a computer in sight.
Prince Roy, who is really Roy Bates, is seen in this first picture with a typical English complexion of rosiness on top of chalk, who is either trying to suppress a look of silly surprise or is holding back the residue of an apple he's eaten after finding half a worm (with a nod to Red Smith).
To say Bates was a character is superficial. He was equal parts Ross Perot, Bruce Willis, a Navy Seal, and Howard Stern. That he is survived by a wife and two children is a testament to their own endurance and their enormous good luck. That he lived to 91 is a defiance of all known odds.
Simply summarized, Roy Bates basically established an offshore fort as a sovereign nation that attracted WikiLeaks Julian Assange's interest in putting his servers there out of subpoena range. The Prince literally fought several times for his nearly 6,000 square foot island that resembled a toppled oil rig platform on concrete pillars that is seven miles offshore from Felixstowe.
To put 6,000 square feet in perspective, I think of the plot of land my house sits on in the birthplace of the suburbs--Long Island. The plot is 60 x 100, which makes the square footage 6,000 square feet. To think of my living space on a horizontal spread seven miles offshore sitting on decaying concrete pillars would not give me comfort. If there were a newspaper delivered, a walk outside to pick it up would require a life vest. I'd have to live there with my eyes closed.
This was not a fictionalized country like Freedonia in the Marx Brothers' movie 'Duck Soup' or a creation of Latka's country Divy-Divy in the TV show 'Taxi'. The place exists to this day.
And true to a good obituary, aside from the colorful read of a true personality, is a sprinkling of Latin phrases, with definitions, and an explanation as to how the three-mile nautical limit became three miles and not two, or four, or six.
There are some abbreviations which elude the American reader. Awarded an MC...military cross. Declared a UDI...unilateral declaration of independence. With www.acronymfinder.com, no problem.
The only thing missing from Prince Roy and his micro-nation status was creating a family big enough to have a better chance of representing the offshore nation-fort in the Olympics. After all, the Prince created a constitution, currency, stamps and a flag.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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