Free Radio Forum: Re: The demise of the Mebo 2.

Scroll down and use Offshore in find for Ian B's article on the Mebo 2 as well as two articles on Red Sands Fort and an article on Radio Mercur for download as pdf's.

http://bdxc.org.uk/articles.html

Previous Message

I should point out that Ian B has done a lot of research on the last years of the Mebo II, from February 1977 when it arrived in Tripoli. This resulted in his almost 3000 word time-line completed 12 years ago. Obviously Robin Adcroft’s input was crucial.

However it is interesting to note that my Dutch and British colleagues, still to the fore, have not shown any great interest in what happened to the Mebo II, even although it was their home for up to three years, or so. I suppose it is like being told that a house you lived in years ago, say as a student, has been torn down. You go “oh” and then forget it.

One Dutch colleague has actually tried for forget his time on board the Mebo II until recently. He said that the winter of 1973 to 1974 was particularly unpleasant with it “always bad weather”.

Previous Message

Looking around the various sites on the internet, the common year when talking of the final demise of the Mebo 2 is 1984.

I don't believe this to be true, the main reason being as follows. In 1982/83 I worked for a station in Ireland where Robin Adcroft/Banks(RIP) was our chief engineer. As you would expect, we had many anorak discussions and during one of those Robin mentioned that the ship had already been disposed of. I am pretty sure this was in the early days of joining our station which would make it autumn/winter 1982.

Robin was always clear that he did not witness the end of the ship, but he did decommission and remove the studio and transmitter equipment that was put into storage near Tripoli. There were rumours during the Libyan revolution that former Mebo transmitters were used by the rebels. Robin thought this to be highly unlikely, as the transmitters were in a poor condition back in 1980 when removed from the ship due to lack of maintenance by the Libyans.

There have been so many stories of the Mebo being sighted over the years, but probably just stories.