Everyone has previously assured me that every island is claimed by someone and that my “party boat” would be hunted down and sunk. However, what would happen if me and fifty of my closest firends showed up to claim an abandoned oil platform (preferably one that was inside of 30 degrees North or South so that it wasn’t to dammed cold. Could we set up our own “mini country?”
Some guy has done this with a so called “Sealand” but the British government has told him it’s not buying it. He doesn’t get in any international bodies, no one respects his “200 mile economic sphere of influence”, but no one really cares enough to go out and knock him off of it. Why don’t you go ahead and declare your own back-yard a nation and see if anybody cares until you start doing things illegal in the country you actually live in?
A country is not a counrty unless its recognized by other states. You’re oil rig isn’t likely to be recognized as an independant state and could be occupied, bombed, molested or sanctioned for any reason a real country sees fit. Esp if you give them reason to.
But Sealand is on an abadoned WWII anti-aircraft platform. Surely it would work if it were done on an oil platform! 
Actually, don’t they move oil platforms from place to place? I don’t think very many of them are abandoned.
if you declare a country INSIDE another country… no one will likely care (or recognize it) as long as you don’t break THAT country’s laws… and you continue to pay thier annual… uh… “tariffs” 
if you are in International Waters… I don’t know what legitamacy you’d get, as long as someone doesn’t look to “aquire” your ‘land’
Well, ideally we would also be well armed. I don’t think that many International organizations recognize Taiwan, but they are essentially an independent nation. I’m thinking of an oil platform lined with AA and Anti ship missiles. How many people would such a platform support? Could you link several together (this would mean actually buying more) to grow our “nation”? Perhaps we could become an International Banking Heaven like the Cayman Islands once was (we would help the CIA with information on terrorists so that they would cut us some slack, but we would keep all other transactions private).
I suggest tinfoil helmets for your uniforms. You know, to protect against the mind bullets ex KGB supersoldiers throw at you. And bigfoot. 
When you become a nuclear power, notify me. I will move to Rolandia immediately and invest my entire equity into your economy, just out of sheer admiration.
Umcle Cecil discusses this general topic in Return of the Straight Dope: How do I go about starting my own country?
Actually Britain does recognize Sealand as an independent country. Once some German soldiers occupied the island for some reason I’ve forgotten. The country of Germany turned to Britain to resolve the situation, but the British courts declared they had no jurisdiction. Then Germany talked to Sealand and the prisoners were released. So considering no country claims the land, I’d say it’s its own country with as much officiality as one can have.
For the record, here is the original thread where I raised this option to your part boat fantasy (see post 43).
Here it mentions the Canadian student who was trying to set up Napster servers on an abandoned oil rig. I wonder whatever happened to that.
As it happens, I was the one who asked the question in Cecil’s column (damn, there goes my secret identity), and I was never particularly satisfied with his original answer. The follow-up gets more to the point of my question, and the book “How to Start Your Own Country” by Erwin Strauss basically answered almost all of them. I recommend it.
According to the official Sealand Web site, “the Royal Family has struck a deal with HavenCo Limited, and that company now leases exclusively its offices and operations centres in Sealand, where it offers, and is able to offer, unparalleled security and independence to users who wish to take advantage of its Internet colocation services.”
There’s some interesting (if slightly biased) history there, too.
What happened is that Roy Bates (the guy who set up Sealand) tried to raise money by selling citizenships for Sealand. This German guy bought a citizenship, and then he and some other guys went out to Sealand and conquered it. Roy Bates was “deposed,” but he put together a force of his own, and they went back and reconquered Sealand. At this point, Bates announced that he was going to execute the German guy for treason. (He was a citizen of Sealand, after all.) At this point, the German government asked the British government to intervene and stop Bates. The British said “Hey, Sealand is independant. We can’t do anything.” Eventually, however, Roy Bates agreed to release the prisoners after the traitor paid a fine. I assume that Mr. German Guy lost his Sealand citizenship. It’s really a pretty cool story.
Dear god, this Bates character wasn’t actually planning on “executing” this individual, was he? Someone tell me this was all a part of the ongoing joke about, hey, here’s this nutjob with his own country!
Sealand is technically a sunken wreck. It was constructed as a barge, towed into position and then deliberately scuttled. Since the sea-bed is shallow it protrudes above the water, but this fact, and the fact that the sinking was intentional, don’t alter the fact that it is a wreck. It is marked as a wreck with appropriate navigational bouys, placed there by the UK navigational authorities.
Under the law of salvage, anyone who takes effectively possession and control of an abandoned or wrecked vessel can claim ownership of it. but this entitles them to recognition as owners of the vessel, not as an internationally sovereign entity. And, in any event, in UK law it’s debatable whether the law of salvage can be invoked against the crown, the original owners of the barge that became Sealand.
During the invasion/occupation of Sealand described above and the dealings with a German diplomat, Sealand lay outside the UK’s three-mile territorial waters. It’s not correct to say that “Britain does recognize Sealand as an independent country”; all that the case established was that the UK courts didn’t claim any jurisdiction over wrecks outside UK territorial waters, not that wrecks were recognised as countries, independent or otherwise. Since that case, the UK has extended its territorial waters to 12 miles, and Sealand lies within them.
Of course he wasn’t. The toleration of Sealand’s pretensions depends on the cost/trouble/embarrassment factor of supressing them exceeding the cost/trouble/embarrassment factor of ignoring them. If Sealand started killing people, that would shift the balance signficantly.
Thanks, I’ll sleep better knowing that tonight.
Straightdope land, a country free of ignorance awaits us bold message board users!
We can decide our laws using Great Debates… it’ll only take several hundred years :rolleyes: