PART 7

PART 7 - HELLO HELLO, WE'RE BACK AGAIN!
The end of 1970 saw Radio Northsea International off the airwaves. A crew supplied by the Veronica organisation had taken over the running of the Mebo II, and the ship remained at sea. The agreement between Veronica and Mebo Ltd. meant that Veronica hired the Mebo II and paid one million guilders (£100,000) to Messrs. Meister and Bollier on condition that they did not broadcast in Dutch or broadcast from off the coast of Holland. This agreement later became the subject of legal action. Mebo Ltd. maintained that the agreement was for two months only, and that all they needed to do to end the contract was to return the million guilders. Veronica took the view that they had the option to renew the agreement indefinitely. This seems to be the most likely version of what happened, though there were other slight variations based on the same general theme. Messrs Meister & Bollier, encouraged by the large number of people that had asked for RNI to return, and having been approached by a Dutch record company, decided to restart RNI. A young producer called Victor Pelli was appointed as Production Director, and quietly he started to get things organised. When the charter agreement expired (as Mebo Ltd. maintained) Mr. Bollier went to the Veronica offices in Hilversum. With him he took two suitcases containing one million guilders worth of Deutschmarks. The Veronica management refused to accept the money, and refused to dissolve the contract. Mebo Ltd. asserted that as they had offered the money they were entitled to resume operations. On January 5, 1971, Mr. Bollier then went out to the Mebo II and dismissed the captain who immediately went ashore to phone the Veronica management. As the captain had technically deserted his ship, Mr. Bollier, who of course still owned the ship, took over as captain. When the ex-captain and some crew members tried to return later Mr. Bollier threatened to use the ship's pistol if necessary, and an attempt at boarding was repelled with fire extinguishers. They returned to shore rather wet, and so ended Veronica's possession of the Mebo II.
	The Mebo 2 sailed several miles down the coast and anchored off Cadzand, on the border with Belgium. The engineers had much work ahead of them to get all the equipment back in working order. It was later claimed that during their tenancy the Veronica staff had done considerable damage, with the probable intention of delaying or preventing a resumption of transmissions. On Friday 29th January 1971 continuous music was heard, on 220 metres MW and 49 metres SW.
If anyone had any doubts about where this powerful signal came from, then the occasional playing of the distinctive RNI theme tune "Man of Action" would surely have provided the necessary proof. For the next two weeks test broadcasts continued with non-stop music, though sometimes all that could be heard was the buzz of the carrier wave. On some days tests only lasted two or three hours, on other days they lasted twelve hours or more. Early in February the Mebo II moved back to its original position off Scheveningen. Then, at 2200 on the night of February 14th, the RNI callsign was re-introduced. Earlier on/about February 6, Alan West & Steve Merike had arrived on board the Mebo II. Alan West remembers: “I went down to pick my ticket up at Swissair and went down to Heathrow and flew over. There was Bruno and Stevie Merike at the airport to meet me and we had a hair-raising drive down the mountains into Zurich in Bruno’s car. I think he had a Thunderbird or something like that … he was a maniac driver. Anyway, we go to Zurich and we stayed in a quaint little Swiss hotel called “Hotel Rosslie”. We went to Bollier’s high life club to record the test tapes and we spent about two weeks there and if I remember rightly doing that we had a great time on Bollier’s expenses going out to nightclubs and buying new suits. It was very nice. Then we went off to Holland. We stayed in "The Grand” in Scheveningen for a couple of days. Steve and I went out to the ship together in a beaten up old East German coastal freighter with water leaking through the bridge roof and there was a force eight blowing. It was a dreadful night. We got out to the Mebo and we went round and round two or three times, horns blowing, but no-one heard us. Then we went alongside and the rumblings and bangings brought everyone up from the bowels of the ship and we tied up and it was then we realised that the wind was much stronger than we thought and the sea was smashing up between the two ships and they were bashing together. Bollier was saying “No, no. Pull away. You’ll damage my ship” and Merike was getting really upset by this time. He’d had enough and he threw his suitcase over the edge and jumped. He must have gone about eight feet I think through the air. Once he’d gone I thought I’m not going back and leave him there on his own, so I threw my case and jumped as well. There was Meister saying “don’t jump, you’ll be killed. Don’t jump”. Anyway, we got on board and there were the two of us on our own with just the crew to keep us company. Kurt Beere was there. I think there was just the one transmitter engineer. We got on very well. We had to. We spent very long hours not only doing test transmissions and running the tapes, but making jingles and putting together our ideas for the format and for the programmes and just getting everything ready. Infact, we worked harder in those two weeks I think than we worked at any time since that.
RNI's Test transmission, voiced by Steve Mericke was: “Radio Northsea International will be on the air for 20 hours per day with music and entertainment especially for you on your particular radio and we’d like to hear from you, especially at this time we’d like to hear from you concerning our reception in your area. Please address your reception reports to Radio Nothsea International, in brackets Reception Reports, P.O.Box 113, 8047 Zurich, Switzerland. If this is the first time that you’ve tuned into Radio Northsea International, may I welcome you to this test transmission and may I ask you if you may like to pick up the ‘phone and tell your friends that we’re back on the air or if your friends live next door or a couple of doors away, why not take the tranny round and prove to them on the spot that RNI is back and on full power”. A reply in the form of one of the beautifully colourful RNI QSL cards was promised to those who sent International Reply Coupons. Next day similar announcements came from an anonymous but easily recognisable voice of Alan West.
In Britain it was impossible to respond by post to the appeal for reception reports because of the Post Office strike, and even when the strike was over, International Reply Coupons were not available in some areas because of the change to decimal currency! The strike also made it impossible to obey the "Save The Mebo" advertisements which mysteriously appeared in the music Press. These said "We've given up car stickers and taken to sending hard cash to RADIO NORTH SEA, Mebo Ltd, PO Box 113, Zurich 8047, Switzerland. International money orders are available at any Post Office. If every RNI supporter sent only 5/-, RNI would receive several million pounds. How about you?" RNI tested on 220 metres in the medium wave band, 1367 kilocycles and on channel 44, 100 megacycles in the FM band and on 6205 kilocycles in the 48 metre band. In the courts of Rotterdam meanwhile, a legal battle between the Veronica Organisation, and RNI's directors raged. Veronica had issued a writ which claimed that the Mebo 2 was still on hire to them, and that RNI had broken the agreement not to broadcast from the Dutch coast, or make broadcasts in the Dutch language. In its' defense RNI countered that wishing to resume broadcasting, they had taken the money in two suitcases to the Veronica offices. Having offered the money, the lawyer maintained that RNI had the right to return to the air. The matter dragged on until April 1970, when a judgment was made in RNI's favour.