History of The Seasteading movement

As climate change and the rise of the sea-level become more prominent, humankind has been dealing with a series of water-related problems requiring creative solutions. Island nations like Tuvalu and Kiribati have already undergone geographical changes due to sea-level rise, even as residents of low-lying outer islands within Kiribati’s national boundary retreat inward. One proposed solution is “Seasteading,” a promising alternative to traditional, terrestrial governance to vulnerable island nations like French Polynesia. According to the Seasteading Institute (TSI), the organization leading the charge for the first large-scale Seastead, the concept name comes from homesteading, which means making a home for oneself in new, uninhabited places. It generally has associations with self-sufficiency and a frontier lifestyle. Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seastead, outside the territory claimed by any government.

           The seasteading concept has some historical antecedents, notably the Principality of Sealand, a long-standing micronation established on a disused British artillery platform in the North Sea by pirate-radio DJ Paddy Roy Bates in 1967. In the early ’60s, Roy Bates, a Major in the British army, established a radio station, situated offshore on an abandoned ex-naval fort named “Knock John”. The theory behind this location was an attempt to bypass the draconian broadcasting restrictions of the time, which permitted little more than formal broadcasting by the BBC. Roy’s station, “Radio Essex,” and others like it, were known affectionately by the media as “Pirate” radio stations and were much loved by the British public, as they supplied everything that the BBC did not at the time, Pop music and amusing presenters.

In the years that ensued, Roy fought an unsuccessful legal battle with the UK government, which questioned the legality of his occupation of the said fort. It was ruled that “Knock John” fell under UK jurisdiction. Smarting from his setback, Roy weighed his options. Another abandoned fortress, Roughs Tower, identical in construction to the Knock John existed further offshore, and crucially, outside of the three-mile limit to which the UK jurisdiction extended. Roy proceeded to occupy Roughs Tower, on Christmas eve 1966, intending to revitalize his dormant radio station. This was until he conjured a different plan entirely. After consulting his lawyers, Roy decided to declare this fortress island the independent state of “Sealand,” Claiming “Jus Gentium” (“Law of Nations”) over a part of the globe that was “Terra Nullius” (Nobody’s Land). On the 2nd of September 1967, accompanied by his wife Joan on her birthday, his son Michael (14), daughter Penelope (16), and several friends and followers, Roy declared the Principality of Sealand.

The inspiration for seasteading also started in 1967, when L.Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, and his executive leadership become a maritime-based community named the Sea Organization. The Sea Org spent most of its existence on the high seas, visiting ports around the world for refueling and resupply. Other historical predecessors and inspirations for seasteading include oil platforms, smaller floating islands in protected waters such as Richart Sowa’s Spiral Island, floating communities such as the Uru people on Lake Titicaca, the Tanka people in Aberdeen, and The Republic of Rose Island, a short-lived micronation on a man-made platform in the Adriatic Sea, 11 kilometers (6.8 mi) off the coast of the province of Rimini, Italy. In 1967, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa funded the construction of a 400-square-meter (4,300 sq ft) platform supported by nine pylons and furnished it with several commercial establishments, including a restaurant, bar, nightclub, souvenir shop and a post office. Some reports also mention the presence of a radio station, but this remains unconfirmed.

The platform declared independence on 24 June 1968, under the Esperanto name “Insulo de la Rozoj”, with Rosa as self-declared President. Both Esperanto rozo (plural rozoj) and Italian rosa (plural rose) mean “rose”. Soon afterward Rose Island issued several stamps, including a stamp showing the approximate location of Rose Island in the Adriatic Sea. The purported currency of the republic was the “Mill” and this appeared on the early stamp issues, although no coins or banknotes are known to have been produced. This denomination was translated into Esperanto as “Miloj” on later stamp issues.

Rosa’s actions were viewed by the Italian government as a ploy to raise money from tourists while avoiding national taxation. Whether or not this was the real reason behind Rosa’s micronation, the Italian government’s response was swift: a group of four carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza officers landed on the “Isola delle Rose” and assumed control. The platform’s Council of Government is said to have sent a telegram, presumably to the Italian government, to protest the “violation of its sovereignty and the injury inflicted on local tourism by the military occupation”, but this was ignored. On 13 February 1969, the Italian Navy used explosives to destroy the facility, an act later portrayed on postage stamps issued by Rosa’s self-declared government in exile.

Two people independently created the term seasteading: Ken Neumeyer in his book Sailing the Farm (1981) and Wayne Gramlich in his article “Seasteading – Homesteading on the High Seas” (1998). Gramlich’s essay attracted the attention of Patri Friedman. The two began working together and posted their first collaborative book online in 2001. Their book explored many aspects of seasteading from waste disposal to flags of convenience. This collaboration led to the creation of the non-profit The Seasteading Institute (TSI) in 2008. TSI is pursuing formal relationships with other coastal nations and has established a working relationship with the non-governmental organization Blue Frontiers. The Seasteading Institute (TSI) and Blue Frontiers are the leading NGOs behind the first Seastead, named the Floating Islands Project (FIP), that would be constructed, operated, and tentatively located in the territorial waters of French Polynesia. The short-term goal of the FIP would involve the habitation of various connected, floating platforms with the capability to reconfigure modules in the future.

Though its mission may seem to belong to the realm of science fiction — establishing self-sufficient, floating cities on the high seas — the seasteading movement is simply the next journey of mankind’s long quest to establish more perfect societies. Seasteaders must be prepared to tackle and overcome serious drawbacks on technological, social, and legal fronts to accomplish their goals. Reviewing other historical examples of intentional communities offers a glimpse and idea of the potential challenges that are common across all such movements and suggests that, to ensure long-term success, seasteaders may benefit long-term from pursuing international recognition of sovereignty for their eventual communities.