Listen here to Harvey Haddock’s pirate radio station broadcasts from the Fisherman’s revolutionary Army on the 20th anniversary of their release.
Listen here to Harvey Haddock’s pirate radio station broadcasts from the Fisherman’s revolutionary Army on the 20th anniversary of their release.
On July 17th, 1996 Harvey Haddock launched his pirate radio station on marine band channels on VHF and SSB radio’s on the US Gulf and East coast. Discreetly distributing prerecorded cassette tapes to like-minded fishermen who would then play the messages on their VHF or SSB radio’s. The messages averaged about 2 minutes a piece so that they could be played without seriously interfering with normal radio operations. They included directions for the tape owners on how best to use them, [Including not to be played on CH 13 and 16] and to destroy them if boarded by the Coast Guard. Each message started with a song which would then be interrupted by Harvey’s Pirate broadcast.
These recordings are 20 years old now so certain references to fisheries are out of date, but amazingly still happening in other fisheries. Harvey’s message was the Government is deliberately screwing fishermen over and that the industry must unite if they had any chance to save themselves. Using a mixture of facts, humor, and political incorrectness Harvey’s message rang true and infuriated what he called the Nazi Marine Fishery Service. The day of the tapes first release coincidentally occurred the same day that TWA Flight 800 crashed into the ocean off of Long Island where the tapes received their widest playing time prompting a short FBI inquiry into the FRA. Tragically the Flight 800 investigation resulted in a controversial conclusion that debunked the 258 eyewitnesses who claimed to see a Missile or bright red light arise from the ground and strike the plane. Just like fishermen their observations were anecdotal and dismissed by the best science available, [which is whatever suits the governments needs].
Unfortunately for Harvey, the fishermen who needed his message most, New Englanders, probably didn’t hear much of him as the fishermen he distributed the tapes to in the north, thought they were too over the top, or politically incorrect. The popularity of the first broadcasts brought a request for a second set of messages from General Taco of Louisiana to address specific issues in the Gulf of Mexico to which Harvey gladly complied. While the first tape had 8 or 9 messages the second was only half that, but both tapes included what became the favorite recordings, the sarcastic NMFS counter programing messages from Colonel Clink from the Nazi Marine Fishery Service urging fishermen not to listen to the pirate radio station “or else”. The first broadcasts run 30 minutes with gaps in between them to aid in their playing as cassettes aren’t exactly precise like a CD. So here for the first time in their entirety are the Harvey Haddock Pirate Radio station broadcasts. Their release is timed to celebrate more of the governments intentional destruction of the fishing industry, thanks to President Obama’s wreckless disregard of all previous fishery management measures, and the legal mechanisms that the government created to manage them. Good job, Obama, the genocide of fishermen is almost complete.