MV Norderney

Norderney was built in 1949 as the MV HH 294 Paul J Müller in Hamburg-Finkenwerder. This 50 metre long trawler was in service as fishing-vessel in the waters around Iceland from 1950 until 1956 and in July of that year it was sold to the Niedersächsische Hochseefischerei GmbH. (Lower Saxony deepsea fishing Ltd.) and was re-christened as NC 420 Norderney.

In 1960, the then 11-year-old vessel was sold to a Dutch company for scrapping. In early 1964 the brothers Verweij bought the ship. The 3 brothers formed the management of Radio Veronica. Norderney was bought to replace the former German lightvessel Borkum Riff from 1911 as that vessel was completely worn-out and also a little bit too small to continue to be operated as a radio ship. As a (former) light-vessel Borkum Riff had her name printed in large letters on the hull of the ship: this idea was copied on Norderney, even though she wasn't a light-ship.

On the Zaanlandse Scheepsbouw Maatschappij shipyard in Zaandam the trawler was transformed into an offshore radio-ship. The works included placement of two 25 meter high wooden antenna-masts to connect the washing-line antenna (nickname for the random wire antenna). Originally Norderney was built as a steamship and the boiler and engine was already removed from the ship when it was bought by the Verweij brothers. This provided the required space for a large studio and a separate large room for the transmission equipment.

A Continental Electronics 316 C medium wave transmitter of 10 Kilowatt.^[2] At a later date a second similar transmitter was installed as backup. In November 1964, Norderney entered service and took over the role of the old Borkum Riff.

During a severe storm on 2 April 1973 at 20:54 hours the anchors of the Nordeney didn't hold and the vessel was drifting. As the ship had no engines she drifted towards the coast at Scheveningen and around 23:30 she ran aground high up the beach of Scheveningen. The crew was already taken off-board by the KNRM lifeboat Bernard van Leer.

Just before the crew left the ship they removed the crystals from the radio-transmitter so that Norderney was legally not being a radio-ship (as that would have been against the law in the Netherlands).

The ship stranded high up on the beach and it took until 7 April before they managed to turn the ship and get the bow pointing towards the sea. It had already been planned to organise a large demonstration on the Binnenhof in The Hague to convince members of parliament not to support new legislation that would outlaw off-shore radio stations. In support of this Radio Veronica needed to be on air during the demonstration the management of Veronica accepted an offer from competitor Radio Caroline to use her ship and transmitter if Veronica assisted in repairing the equipment on board of the ship Mi-Amigo.

In the early hours of 18 April, exactly the day of the planned demonstration in The Hague, tugboats managed to get Norderney back afloat and she was brought back to her original position, some 6 nautical miles from the coast - just outside the territorial waters. At around 16:00 that day, Norderney was back in service and Radio Veronica could be received via her own frequency on the 538 meter-band as well as on 259 meter via the transmitter of Radio Caroline.