#seland

Selandia in Bangkok 1912

Selandia (after the Latin name for the Danish island of Sjælland) was the name of three ships of the Danish East Asiatic Company, the best known of which, the first MS Selandia of 1912, was the most advanced ocean-going diesel motor ship in her time.

She was built at Burmeister & Wain in Copenhagen, and launched on 4 November 1911 before embarking on her maiden journey from Copenhagen to Bangkok on 22 February 1912. Selandia did not have a funnel; instead exhaust from her engines escaped through exhaust ports in the aft mast.

Built for cargo and passenger services between Scandinavia, Genoa, Italy, and Bangkok, Thailand, Selandia had "very ample and rather luxurious" cabins for 20 first class passengers, single-berth cabins of "exceptional size, with toilet and bath for every two cabins, and an extra feature is the servants' rooms, arranged in connection with private cabins."

She is frequently referred to as "the world's first large ocean-going diesel-powered ship", an "experiment," as previous powered vessels were driven by steam. The new motorships were described as "smokeless" and caused some to describe them as "phantom ships" with an incident during the trials for "Selandia" in which a captain of another ship ignored warnings and ran across her bows because he "saw no smoke." The ship attracted curious crowds from London to San Francisco that were often skeptical of a deep ocean ship not powered by the commonly used triple expansion steam engine; yet within ten years there were over 2,000,000 deadweight capacity tons in commerce powered by diesel engines and British experts calculated the motorship had a 40% advantage in fuel costs, with fewer crew and steadier sea speeds.

There is evidence to say that the engine installation in Selandia was a world-first on numerous points, but she was not the world's first diesel-driven ocean-going ship, having been beaten to it by the Dutch tanker Vulcanus two years earlier.

Sealand; 1967’den beri bağımsızlığını ilan etmiş bir devlet statüsünde. Kendisine de prens ünvanı veren Roy Bates ve ailesi tarafından yönetilen ülkenin her üyesinin kraliyet ünvanı mevcut. Ülkenin kendine ait 7 maddelik bir  anayasası da bulunuyor.

(Roy Bates ve Eşi)

Sealand’ın egemenlik simgesi olarak da bir bayrağı, ülkenin milli sloganından gelen “E Mare Libertas” isimli bir milli marşı ve para birimi de mevcut. Bununla birlikte Sealand’a ait  pasaport ve resmi para birimi de bulunmakta.  Ülkenin şu anda hukuki statüsü tartışmalı bir durumda.

Resmi kayıtlara göre ülkeye kayıtlı yalnızca 4 vatandaş bulunuyor.

Seland’in milli futbol takımı Vestbjerg  ile KKTC  arasında da bir milli maç yapılmıştır. KKTC maçı 6-1 kazanmıştır.

Ülke 2007 yılında 10.000.000 Sterlin‘e satılığa çıkarılmıştır.

Sealand’ın kurucusu Prens Roy Bates, 2012 yılında 91 yaşında ölmüştür. Roy Bates’in ölümünden sonra yeni Prens, Prens Naibi Michael Bates olmuştur.