Home News Features A life on the waves with Caroline

A life on the waves with Caroline

Tuesday, 09 June 2009

WHEN 19-year-old music obsessed Dubliner Steve Conway left his native Churchtown and took the Liverpool ferry to England in 1982 he didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life; but he knew music was going to figure prominently in whatever career he chose. Steve, who now lives in Ballinteer, first found work as an IT engineer while gigging as a DJ with a small rock-orientated pirate music radio station in South London. But the environs of the city and the small audience that the pirate stations attracted were not to hold Steve’s attention for very long. He quickly became interested in a radio station that was playing the hits of the day mixed with an eclectic collection of rock, reggae and album tracks. The DJs were friendly without being obtrusive and there were very little commercials getting in the way of the music – that radio station was Radio Caroline. Steve joined Caroline in 1987, which was considered the first of the pirates, an iconic radio station broadcasting from a ship called the ‘Ross Revenge’ from just outside English territorial waters. Excitement “During the years that I was involved with the station I worked with more than 100 fellow broadcasters and crew members who all played a vital role in keeping Radio Caroline alive and at sea during a fascinating period at the end of the 1980s,” remembers Steve. He has detailed his amazing life on board the Ross Revenge in a new book entitled ‘Shiprocked’ in which he relates the excitement, and danger of living on board the pirate ship for long periods at a time and the constant battle to keep the complex electronic equipment working in sometimes treacherous conditions. When the Ross Revenge ran aground on the notorious Goodwin Sands of the South East coast of England in hurricane force winds in November 1991 Steve had to be rescued by a RAF helicopter. The event was so dramatic that an RNLI lifeboat that was dispatched to go to the ship’s aid itself ran aground. But Steve and his fellow pirate broadcasters were all rescued and lived to tell the tale. “As we flew away from her she was still semi-upright in the water, somehow managing to look sad, abandoned, and beautiful all at the same time,” Steve recalls as he watched the abandoned Ross Revenge from the rescue helicopter that had just saved his life. In its heyday Radio Caroline had upwards of 23 million listeners and even in its later years the audience still numbered over five million. The station still runs today, on satellite, and is funded entirely by volunteers and subscribers. Many Irish DJs and writers have worked on Radio Caroline over the years including Gareth O’Callaghan, Paul McKenna and Stuart Clarke. The station also launched the careers of Radio Nova and Sunshine Radio bosses Chris Carey and Robbie Dale.