This story was excerpted and adapted from the author’s book, Sealand: The True Story of the World’s Most Stubborn Micronation and its Eccentric Royal Family, which was published in June 2020 by Diversion Books. At 6:00 a.m. on a cold day in March 2019, a lone figure can be seen on the pier in Harwich, on the coast of Essex, England, in the deep blue of the early morning light. The man in his late 50s wears a taxi driver hat and blue mechanic’s jumpsuit over jeans and a sweater….
