Radio Caroline is a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O'Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies' control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC's radio broadcasting monopoly. Unlicensed by any government for most of its early life, it was a pirate radio station that never became illegal as such due to operating outside any national jurisdiction, although after the Marine Offences Act (1967) it became illegal for a British subject to associate with it. The Radio Caroline name was used to broadcast from international waters, using five different ships with three different owners, from 1964 to 1990, and via satellite from 1998 to 2013. Since August 2000, Radio Caroline has also broadcast 24 hours a day via the internet and by the occasional restricted service licence. Currently they also broadcast on DAB radio in certain areas of the UK: these services are part of the Ofcom small-scale DAB+ trials. Caroline can be heard on DAB+ in Aldershot, Birmingham, Cambridge, Brighton, Glasgow, Norwich, London, Portsmouth, Poulton-le-Fylde and Woking. Caroline can also be listened to over the internet including via music players such as Amazon echo (Alexa). In May 2017, Ofcom awarded the station an AM band community licence to broadcast to Suffolk and north Essex; full-time broadcasting, via a previously redundant BBC World Service transmitter mast at Orford Ness, commenced on 22 December 2017. Radio Caroline broadcasts music from the 1960s to contemporary, with an emphasis on album-oriented rock (AOR) and "new" music from "carefully selected albums". On 1 January 2016, a second channel was launched called Caroline Flashback, playing pop music from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. 1964–1968 Origins Radio Caroline was begun by Irish musician manager and businessman Ronan O'Rahilly, after he failed to obtain airplay on Radio Luxembourg for Georgie Fame's records because the station was committed to sponsored programmes promoting major record labels: EMI, Decca, Pye and Philips. Encouraged by Scandinavian and Dutch radio pirates, in February 1964 O'Rahilly obtained the 702-ton former Danish passenger ferry , launched in Frederikshavn in 1929, which was converted into a radio ship at the Irish port of Greenore, owned by O'Rahilly's father. At the same time, Allan Crawford's Project Atlanta was equipping the MV Mi Amigo at Greenore, where the two competed to be the first on air. Financial backing for the venture came from six investors, including