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HavenCo Limited first became known to the world in the year 2000 as a result of worldwide media coverage announcing that the company would establish a secure data haven on a partially submerged former Royal Navy sea barge which had been renamed Principality of Sealand. The actual location of the facility was at Rough Tower on Rough Sands sandbar in British territorial waters approximately six miles from the English coast of Suffolk and eight miles from the coast of Essex in southeast England.1 Creation of the company
On August 22, 2000, Michael Bates of Leigh-on-sea, Essex, England bought an existing but dormant British company which was renamed HavenCo Limited. It was given the registration number of 04056934 by Companies House, a part of the UK Department of Trade and Industry. The registered office of HavenCo Limited was recorded at 11 Kintyre House, Cold Harbour, London, E14 9NL England. The directors were listed as Michael Roy Bates, a citizen of the United Kingdom, and Ryan Donald Lackey, who was born on March 17, 1979 and is a citizen of the United States. Following Internet exposure of this registration the company then relocated its registration to Cyprus.
2 Rough Tower
HavenCo claimed to have established a secure colocation facility on Rough Tower, which is the superstructure of a sunken sea barge that can be seen above the shallow waterline on Rough Sands sandbar in British territorial waters. It is approximately six miles from the coastline of Suffolk and eight miles from the coastline of Essex in southeast England.
Rough Tower was constructed by the UK Ministry of War (now Ministry of Defence), as a Royal Navy sea fort. It was built in an English dock on board a barge, which was then towed by three tugboats to the North Sea during World War II and submerged on Rough Sands sandbar. After the War it was still marked by UK buoys (which remain to this day) and a number of official entities made use of it. Finally the Ministry of Defence had no further use for the sunken sea barge and it was left unattended. In the late 1960s pirate radio operators took control of it, and through a succession of takings by force it ended up under the control of Roy Bates, a British citizen who lived at Westcliff-on-Sea (near Southend-on-Sea), Essex, who then claimed that it was now the independent and sovereign "Principality of Sealand".
In 1987 the UK extended her territorial waters from three miles to twelve miles, thus incorporating Rough Sands and Rough Tower. Today the UK Crown Estate, Marine Estates Department, Coastal Section has title to all of the offshore lands and several parcels of land onshore. Because the legal occupant is the Ministry of Defence, Crown Estates do not charge rent for the occupation of Rough Tower and because Roy Bates has never taken his case into a court of law to claim squatters' rights, he remains in unlawful possession of government property that the Ministry of Defence has no further use for.
Although mail addressed to the "Principality of Sealand" is delivered to a British Post Office in Felixstowe, Suffolk for pick-up, Roy Bates has persisted in claiming that Rough Tower is a more than just a sea barge belonging to the Ministry of Defence. His claim rests on a local court case involving the 1937 Firearm Act which in 1968 had not been extended by law to cover international waters in the same way that the 1967 Marine Broadcasting Offences Act later extended the 1947 Wireless Telegraphy Act. Because of further claims that a ship had been registered in the "Principality of Sealand", a US court with UK participation, entered an opinion in 1990 which was reaffirmed in 1991, that such claims were nonsense and that no such entity existed. The HM Treasury Solicitor responded that such claims were "drivel".
