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A former wartime fortress which is now a self-proclaimed independent state has been left devastated after a fierce blaze tore through the structure.The so-called Principality of Sealand, seven miles off the coast of Felixstowe and Harwich, was evacuated at lunchtime yesterdayafter a generator caught fire.Thames Coastguard, Harwich RNLI lifeboat, Felixstowe Coastguard rescue teams, firefighting tug Brightwell, the RAF rescue helicopter from Wattisham and 15 Suffolk based firefighters from the National Maritime Incident Response Group (MIRG) were all called into action to tackle the blaze.One man, believed to be a security guard, was airlifted from the scene and taken to Ipswich Hospital with smoke inhalation but no one else was on the Second World War gun emplacement.
This summer, with $1 million in seed money provided by a small core of Internet-fattened investors, Lackey and his colleagues are setting up Sealand as the world's first truly offshore, almost-anything-goes electronic data haven - a place that occupies a tantalizing gray zone between what's legal and what's ... possible. Especially if you exist, as the Sealanders plan to, outside the jurisdiction of the world's nation-states. Simply put: Sealand won't just be offshore. It will be off-government. The startup is called, fittingly, HavenCo Ltd. Headquartered on a 6,000-square-foot, World War II-era antiaircraft deck that comprises the "land" of Sealand, the facility isn't much to look at and probably never will be. It consists of a rusty steel deck sitting on two hollow, chubby concrete cylinders that rise 60 feet above the churn of the North Sea. Up top there's a drab building and a jury-rigged helicopter landing pad. Soon, Lackey believes, powerful upgrades will transform Sealand into something amazing. The huge support cylinders will contain millions of dollars' worth of networking gear: computers, servers, transaction processors, data-storage devices - all cooled with banks of roaring air conditioners and powered by triple-redundant generators. HavenCo will provide its clients with nearly a gigabit per second of Internet bandwidth by year's end, at prices far cheaper than those on the overregulated dry land of Europe
HavenCo will provide its clients with nearly a gigabit per second of Internet bandwidth by year's end, at prices far cheaper than those on the overregulated dry land of Europe
