(Gulls cry)
This is Coast.
The wild islands of the British lsles.
Splinters of land, oceans of water.
At times the sea protects, at others it attacks!
Rocky islets rise like sparkling jewels, ripe for the taking,
a tempting target for invaders.
From hostile incursions to the welcome influx of wildlife.
We'll reveal surprising stories of invasions around our shores.
My base of operations is on the Channel lslands,
where remarkably some German strongholds are still unexplored.
Now l'm gearing up for an invasion of my own.
l'm breaking into a sealed Nazi bunker.
Nobody's seen this for more than 60 years.
And the team are gearing up for invasions too.
Out on the lsle of Man, Ruth is bracing herself for a mighty sea-born assault.
The leather-clad clans are gathering.
The TT is in town.
On a tiny Scottish isle Andy is hunting for animal invaders - little furry ones!
The amazing thing is is that this entire colony,
hundreds of individuals from one pregnant female.
And Tessa is flying back to the First World War as she's blown away by aerial invaders.
Beware the Zeppelins!
Terrifying dogfights to the death, pitting bi-planes against airships.
These stories tell of the lnvaders of the lsles.
My island destination sits in the firing line between England and France.
l'm heading to Guernsey.
Guernsey's the ideal place to recall both the risks, and the rewards of invasion.
lts islanders made good money from historic battles with France.
l'll be exploring how swashbuckling Guernsey sailors ran rings around Napoleon's navy.
But in the Second World War the people felt the full force of Hitler's invading army.
(Whooping)
Now the heavens explode each year to mark the end of German occupation.
Guernsey is celebrating its liberty, a night that burns bright with the memories of invasion.
ln June 1 940 it wasn't friendly fire that lit up the skies.
The dark hand of the Third Reich was about to grasp the lsle of Guernsey.
With invasion inevitable islanders had a stark choice.' stay or go.
l've got here a copy of the Guernsey newspaper, The Evening Press,
dated Wednesday June 1 9th, 1 940.
lt reads: ''Evacuation Of Children: Parents must report this evening''.
Well, these parents were being given just a few hours to decide
whether to stay or to leave the island.
The following morning that quayside over there was packed with people queuing up
to board ships back to England.
Seven-year-old Paulette Tapp's mother was dead, and her father was away fighting,
so her grandmother decided Paulette should be evacuated.
(Gulls cry)
ls this you in this photograph?
Well, this is my grandmother, and that was me when l was three years old.
- Did she go with you? - No, no, no. l was on my own.
Completely on my own. There was nobody.
While Paulette left for an uncertain future in England,
on Guernsey, a little boy remained on the quayside.
- Very good to meet you. - How do you do?
Stanley Bichard was the middle one of three boys...
..who with their mum and dad were about to experience invasion.
Just days after the evacuations Guernsey's harbour was bombed, many were killed.
Two days later the island was occupied.
The German invaders took their pick of the houses,
including the one next door to Stanley's family.
- Strange neighbours. - Yeah.
And the week after, they came in and they knocked the back door, into my mum, and said,
''We'd like you to do some washing for the Germans.''
So my mum said, ''No, l don't do washing for German soldiers.''
They said, ''You will wash for the soldiers
or you will vacate your premises by the end of the week.''
And, of course, there's five of us in the family - where are we going?
Many island children had gone to seek safety on the mainland.
Seven-year-old Paulette, travelling alone, was evacuated to Cheshire,
to be looked after by nuns.
This homesick little girl was about to acquire a very special guardian angel.
Remember, in this country, the gift must be based on your ability to give.
NlCK: First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was coaxing American women
to do their bit for the war effort.
Mrs Roosevelt sought a young pen pal.
She received a letter from a lonely girl in Cheshire.
''Dear Mrs Roosevelt,
Well, first of all, l hope you are well and in good health.
YOUNG PAULETTE: Please give my best regards to President Roosevelt.
Thank you very much for the pretty green dress, it fits me just fine,
and l love the blouse to go with it.
Your loving foster child Paulette. ''
NlCK: Meanwhile, guardian angels were in short supply on Guernsey.
As the occupation wore on rations were meagre.
Four ounces of meat a week for the family of five.
- That's nothing. - Eggs were very hard to come by,
because everybody killed the chickens to have food for eating it.
''We had a lovely supper, lemonade cakes and biscuits.
Then for tea we all had a bar of chocolate.''
- Remember being hungry? - Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yes, a few times.
lt must have been difficult for your mother knowing that.
Mum and Dad, they suffered a lot at different times. Yeah.
How do you feed a family of five when you've got nothing?
Paulette had a full stomach but an empty heart.
Her gran on occupied Guernsey couldn't get letters out.
My only person that l really loved was my grandmother.
l missed her cuddles and hugs, you know, because we didn't get many.
They were good, the nuns, but we didn't have the love.
Paulette's safe surroundings were tinged with sadness.
For young Stanley the lush landscape of Guernsey may have been a war zone,
but it was still his playground.
A favourite prank was pelting passing cars with lumps of turf.
l was just along there somewhere, a lovely turf about as big as my hand there.
So when the car came, the window was open, l didn't know it was a German.
l wasn't being brave or anything like that, but l spiffed the turf over the edge.
lt went straight through the window and hit the officer straight in the face.
And, of course, there was a squeak of the tyres and we hid.
We were a bit petrified then.
The headmaster of the school said they were going to take hostages,
because they thought it was an act of sabotage.
lt wasn't sabotage. lt was a game, like, you know?
And we got away with it by writing a letter of apology to the commandant.
They let us get away with it.
German rule ground on for nearly five years.
By the end the invaders were as much prisoners as the islanders - both were starving.
STANLEY: After D-Day in Normandy there was nothing coming in at all,
and, also, the Germans were suffering.
- A lot of cats went missing during the war. - They ate them?
- Yeah, and dogs. They had my dog. - They ate your dog?
Oh, yeah. But you couldn't buy anything cos nothing was coming in.
The desperate days ended on the 8th of May, 1 945.
With the war over Paulette came home.
But she's never met Stanley to share their different experiences of invasion.
ls it better to leave home and be fed or to stay with your family and go hungry?
l couldn't let my children go.
l'd want them with me, l would try and do everything l could.
lf somebody had been able to cuddle me, you know.
And you miss that, don't you, when you're children?
BOTH: Yeah.
So, really, in that way, l suffered more emotionally,
- and you suffered more with your food. - Without a doubt.
Come for a little cuddle.
Guernsey still counts the human cost of occupation.
But elsewhere, there are invasions we're happy to see.
Migrating birds re-colonise some remote outposts each year.
Perfect perches to breed and feed.
(Squawking)
Seabirds come and go as they please,
but journey to Scotland and you'll discover an odd group of animal invaders,
trapped on the outcrop of Coreisa.
Andy Torbet is in search of creatures living like Robinson Crusoe,
castaways on a forgotten isle.
The tiny island of Coreisa is a pinprick of rock out there.
lt's only five miles from the shore, but, for most, it might as well be Mars.
AND Y: No scheduled boats go there, so you have to find a local willing to take you.
l'm seeking four-legged invaders discovered on a small isle near here in 1 964
by an inquisitive explorer.
This is Gordon Corbett, a curator of mammals at the Natural History Museum in London.
He'd heard whispers of a mysterious creature living on an island in these waters -
a colony that had no place being there.
Locals thought they might be rats, but Gordon had his own suspicions.
He travelled out to the island to catch one and take a specimen back to London.
This is the animal he caught. He'd found a freshwater vole.
How had this shy river creature crossed miles of seawater?
How had it survived marooned on the island?
lt was astonishing to discover water voles on tiny isles off Western Scotland.
Normally, they thrive in freshwater avoiding the perils of the open seas.
So how did water voles get to this rocky outcrop, Coreisa?
Did a pregnant female find herself on a passing boat?
Or were they washed out on sea currents?
However it happened, once ashore, these invaders were quite alone.
People pass by the island but er...
but it's very rarely that l ever see anybody go on the island or even looking in on it.
No, it's pretty well untouched, aye.
The island of Coreisa is about the size of three football pitches.
There's little shelter and no running water.
But for the next two days this is home.
And l've got company.
Scientists from Aberdeen University are studying how, over generations,
the voles have adapted to this alien environment.
Helping me get settled is biologist Matt Oliver.
Well, interestingly the water voles here have a very different behaviour
and eco-type from water voles in the Scottish mainland.
We've got very little fresh water on this island at all,
and instead the water voles have a more mole-like existence.
They live in burrows underneath the ground, eating roots and shoots.
And they don't have many competitors so they've got a free rein of the place.
And l can see just from sitting here lots of vole signs,
so you're not far away from a vole right now.
These shy creatures aren't too keen to meet us,
so team leader Stuart Piertney is laying a trap baited with tatties and carrots.
- Put a bit of extra bedding material in. - OK.
- Yep. - The door closes behind them, simple as that.
And it doesn't do the vole any harm to be trapped?
Absolutely not. These guys think of these as little, sort of mini-hotel rooms.
They really like the idea. They can get a good feed.
We know that because from one day to the next we'll be catching the same voles.
With the traps set we work on our own survival strategy.
(Low chatter)
Good morning, and good news.
The water voles have checked into the traps overnight,
so now it's rise and shine for them too.
Right. Let's process this little guy and see what we've got.
OK.
- So the first job is to get him out of the trap. - Yep.
And there he is.
They're much bigger than l thought they'd be.
They've got hardy tails, so you can keep hold of them with that,
and he's as happy as Larry in the hand there.
Just want to grab him by the tail first, make sure he doesn't give you a bit of a nip.
There we are.
The amazing thing is, is that this entire colony from one pregnant female.
So hundreds of individuals from just one.
ln essence these guys are all related: it's all brothers and uncles and aunties.
Theory would predict when you've got a small isolated population like this,
they should have lost their genetic variation, which should make them not very fit.
They should be prone to the effects of parasites,
but you can see that's really not the case at all.
These guys are looking healthy, so they seem to be bucking the trend one way or another.
The researchers expected in-breeding to produce sickly animals prone to infection,
but, in fact, they are thriving.
The team are unravelling the genetic puzzle
of how a healthy colony may have flourished from just one female.
The findings could help preserve endangered species that have dwindled to a few individuals.
As for the descendants of the original water vole invader,
they may have become inmates on this island, but l can think of worse places to be marooned.
(Gulls cry)
NlCK: ln our fights for survival we've created some remarkable artificial islands.
Forts that helped keep foreign aggressors at bay.
But some in the British lsles have suffered conquest in living memory.
l'm on Guernsey.
ln the Second World War on the Channel lslands,
attackers soon became defenders.
The invaders of these isles left a grim legacy.
German bunkers that outlasted the Third Reich.
Some 1,000 Nazi fortifications were embedded in the rock of Guernsey -
potent symbols of the propaganda value to be gained by occupying British Crown Territory.
Hitler wouldn't give up the Channel lslands without a fight.
Now l'm gearing up for an invasion of my own.
Many of these tombs of tyranny were sealed at the end of the last war,
but one of the bunkers is about to be re-opened for the first time in over 60 years.
l'm going to be a Nazi tomb raider.
On a beach-side golf course
they're excavating the entrance to the forgotten underground bunker.
To see what could lie in store l'm visiting another site.
This gun emplacement was only re-opened in 201 0.
My guide is bunker specialist Paul Bourgaize.
- Chilly and dark, isn't it? - Just watch these steps there.
We're in a small square room. What have we got over here?
This is actually a fortress telephone.
- So this is a hand-cranked telephone? - Yep.
So what does this say?
''Achtung! Feind hort mit'' was a warning you'd find above all phones.
And it basically says, ''Warning, the enemy is listening.''
So it was just, ''Watch what you're saying.''
- Very smooth, isn't it? - Yes.
lt's approximately a tonne of steel that's moving there.
Top-quality German engineering.
This portal cut into the concrete was the firing position for an anti-tank gun.
lts crew were charged with repelling a possible beach invasion.
Historians on Guernsey are re-discovering the secrets of fortifications across the island.
The digger's scoop has just revealed the top of the doorway.
Nobody's seen this for more than 60 years.
Buried for decades.
Now we're the first to enter a forgotten lair of Hitler's Army.
This was once a staircase that a six-foot man could walk down.
Now...it's like a cave entrance.
lncredible. Look at this on the roof, miniature stalactites of rust.
Very nasty gunk all over the floor. This seems to be oil more than water.
Because this is a personnel bunker these are the hooks for the beds or the bunks.
Still original, all fixed to the walls.
- These hooks were where the bunks... - That's where the bunks would have been.
There would have been a chain hanging down from the ceiling there, attached to those hooks.
Suspended. These are like a ship's bunks. Did they fold away?
They did fold away, yes.
Up to ten men slept in this windowless tomb, theirjob to man the gun emplacements.
This is smaller. What was this space for?
Yeah, this is ventilation escape shaft as well.
- Where did you escape? There's no way out. - Yeah, this is the escape shaft here.
lt would have been tricky to get out of here.
- You've got a steel door. - Yeah.
You'd have had two rows of steel girders across there in those recesses,
that had to be pulled out.
You've then got a brick wall that needs to be demolished,
and then the whole of the escape shaft which goes right up to the surface was filled with sand.
All that had to come in before anybody could go out.
Why did they make it so difficult to get out?
Well, they don't want people coming in either, so...
So this was a last resort, if you were completely trapped down here...
- A gas attack, anything like that... - You'd dig your way out.
Absolutely.
This up here, by the looks of it, was some sort of newspaper or article, but it's all in German.
- The second word is ''Fuhrer''. - That's very exciting that.
lt translates as ''Sworn to the Fuhrer''.
Perhaps it was a picture...
- Maybe a picture of Hitler. - Definitely a possibility.
You might think the soldiers who once sheltered in these dank vaults
would want to purge the island from their memories.
But some, like Fritz Kunz, who was stationed in a bunker, still return to Guernsey.
ln 1 943, aged just 1 7, Fritz found himself in charge of a gunnery crew.
All the other soldiers came to Russia, and l was the only who knows the gun.
And so became commander of the camp.
- But you were lucky not to go to Russia. - Of course.
Yeah, that was good. The Eastern Front was a bad place to be.
Yes. We came here and we think... we came in the paradise.
- Really? - Yes.
- You thought it was paradise? - Yes.
What did you think when you saw the bunker being opened over there?
How did you find that?
Oh, it was...awful.
lt was a horrible thing.
Do you remember when Guernsey was liberated?
- Yes. - What happened?
lt was... (Big sigh of relief)
- lt's...going out. - A huge relief.
- OK, it's... Now it is peace. - Finished.
Finished.
We're on a journey to explore invasions of our isles.
lt's a story they know all too well on the lsle of Man.
This island has been occupied by the Norse, the Scots...
..and the English.
Today, though, it's fiercely independent.
Surprising, then, that the Manx people open their arms to one race
that lays siege to their isle every year.
Ruth Goodman is bracing herself for an epic invasion.
Out there beyond the sea the leather-clad clans are gathering.
An army is assembling from around Britain and far beyond.
They mount their two-wheeled chariots bound for the lsle of Man.
The locals ready to do battle - for business.
Burgers, buns, beer - the TT is in town.
For two weeks in early summer the sound of high-speed combustion
and the smell of leather cover the island - whatever the weather.
Day and night, wave after wave of boats
disgorge disciples of the most dangerous bike-fest on earth.
TTstands for Tourist Trophy,
and these days it attracts over 30,000 tourists who bring around 1 0,000 motorbikes.
So what's in it for the bikers,
and how do the locals feel about this friendly invasion of their small isle?
The hotels can't accommodate the sudden influx of bodies.
Bikers are berthed in private houses all over the island.
Everybody mucks in to keep the TTon track.
And the restaurants stock up for a briefly-lived bonanza.
- He's huge. - That's the female.
- Oh, it's a female. How can you tell? - And that's the male.
That bit there carries the eggs.
- Beautiful colour. - This is probably our busiest time.
lt's a big part of the year - eat and drink, isn't it?
- Yeah, party time. - Party time.
As long as they eat it we'll catch it.
Look at that. lt's like one enormous giant prawn. Delicious.
Every bite, lick and chip swells the bank balance of the lsle of Man.
This is an invasion any island would welcome.
So how did this small self-contained community
come to host the world's ultimate motorbike road race?
l'm heading for a private viewing of some rare film that takes us right back to the beginning.
This little picture palace is about as old as the TT- a century and counting.
l'm meeting social historian and TTexpert Matthew Richardson.
- Hi. - Hello.
What's this?
This is some early footage of one of the first TT races on the lsle of Man.
Ooh, blinking 'eck. He just picked himself up and got back on the bike.
- l mean, that's a pretty low-speed crash. - lt's...it's all relative.
The 1 91 1 Junior TT, the winner won at just over 40 mph.
The current lap record is just over 1 30 mph.
They still look like pushbikes with motors on, don't they?
They were. Technology was very primitive.
The TTraces began after speed regulations were imposed on British roads in 1 903.
A 20-mile-an-hour limit was set on the mainland.
The self-governing lsle of Man had no such restrictions.
The only limits were the power of the bikes and the skill of the riders.
MATTHEW: ln the early days it wasn't all about speed, it was very much a trial of reliability.
One of the early riders comments that although he won the race
he had to stop to mend a puncture.
Pushing the bikes to breaking point year after year
created the TT's global reputation for thrills and spills.
Go anywhere in the world, people might not be sure where the lsle of Man is,
but there's a fair chance they'll have heard of the TT Races.
They say to understand someone you should walk a mile in their shoes.
l'd never normally wear trousers at the beach...
Or ride a mile in their leathers.
But then tights and bikes don't really mix.
l'm joining the tribe that has taken over the island, for a ride with one of the race's royals.
Sidecar passenger Rose Hanks was the queen of the TTin the '60s...
..and Roy was her prince.
Roy Hanks has been TTracing since 1 966, a sidecar legend.
Now Rose has agreed to turn her husband over to me, and she is a hard act to follow.
ln 1 968 Rose became the first woman ever to get on the podium.
- There she is, proud moment, yeah. - Absolutely. Rose was the first.
l remember when l first met her... she impressed me then.
But when she was dressed in black leather she was even better-looking and...
(Ruth laughs)
Rose's skill in the sidecar made her a star in the '60s.
Today she's happiest steering the family bike business out of the limelight.
Cos there wasn't so many girls around doing it you got more attention so...
And now they want you to wear make-up.
l says, ''No, l don't wear make-up when l'm racing.''
They were good days they were, the best.
That was the year she was presented to...
BOTH: Prince Phillip.
See the mop of hair there, see?
- Yeah. - Not on Prince Phillip but on Rose.
For riders like Rose the glamour of the TT goes hand-in-glove with the danger.
The infamous mountain course is considered the world's most lethal.
Over 1 30 riders have been killed on the road.
Sometimes l get a bit worried and concerned how dangerous it could be and has been.
But once l'm on my bike racing...
..l'm 21 again.
RUTH: Who wouldn't want to be 21 again?
l'm along for the ride, Roy's at the handlebars. The tarmac of the TTbeckons.
From my sidecar seat the future rolls out ahead, but echoes of the past are never far behind.
Wow, what a view.
Now l can see why bikers enjoy overtaking the island each year.
Oh, marvellous (Laughs)
NlCK: We're exploring invaders of the isles.
Even in peacetime small islands face a threat from bigger neighbours.
The invasion of new ideas can destroy traditional lifestyles.
Historically, better prospects overseas
have stripped Scottish islands of their brightest and best.
The pain of separation is still raw to the lost community of Stroma.
People clung on here until 1 962.
John Manson and his family were the last to leave Stroma.
Now John's heading back to the deserted isle.
See the ruin in the middle? That one on the right-hand side is my grandfather's house.
His past life is lost in the sea mist.
The weather today makes the island more dreich-looking than...
Dreich meaning dilapidated and not good-looking.
Helen Adams lives on the mainland now but she was born on Stroma.
She hasn't been back since the mid-'60s, for good reason.
Stroma is an idyllic island, and for anyone who visits it or lives in its vicinity,
l would say it's where the earth meets the sky.
lt's on the edge of the world.
l feel very confident in thought that l will never return to Stroma,
because it was a wonderful island for me,
and l have this romantic bubble contained within my head.
And that bubble l don't ever wish to burst.
lt feels a wee bit funny to walk on the island again but it's lovely to be here.
Everything seems a wee bit smaller than it used to do.
The...the pier here l...
You always think it's wider when you're younger.
HELEN: l had a wonderful life on Stroma - never, ever lonely. Never. Never.
A home of plenty: Mum baked and cooked and made...
..tables creaking with goodies.
This is our family home that we left in...1 962.
lt was the last house that anybody lived in here on the island.
That's my bedroom there. lt wasn't like that in 1 962.
That's...that's the table we used to eat off.
My mother and father slept in the box bed here, and...my bedroom was here.
Not a very good bedroom now.
You could look out the window, see the sea views, ships passing.
lt's sad when you come and look where you lived. Aye, sad.
A lots of islanders have died off.
They got less on the island when we were living here,
and now they're getting less on the mainland through them dying away and that, you know.
lt's sad...
lt's sad to speak about it sometimes but you have to speak about it.
You have to speak about it, but it's sad to speak about it.
School was lovely.
JOHN: Girls at this school learned to cook and the boys learned woodwork.
lt's still in remarkably good nick, the building itself.
There would be about...what, 20 pupils, and we had a really good teacher.
She was a Miss Manson. And she taught us a little poem:
Good, better, best, never let it rest...
Until your good is better and your better's best.
And that was a motto which she wanted us to carry for the rest of our lives.
l would leave the island in 1 951 to go to the high school,
and l can still see that wistful look upon my mother's face as she packed the case
for her only child to go to the ends of the earth.
This was another of our hobbies, watching ships passing. The picture always changes.
lt's another ship, it's another boat or whatever is coming.
But it was a great hobby for all the islanders - telescope and watching the ships passing.
People have this idea that they used to say, particularly when l was at the high school,
''Oh, you know you're cut off, you're cut off by the sea.''
An islander is never cut off because it's the very opposite the islander feels.
lt's the sea which connects us with the mainland.
JOHN: lslanders left, seals multiplied, birds multiplied.
Wildlife use it as their home now.
Parents realised as parents do, they want the best for their families.
That, l think, that was the reason why the people drifted to the mainland and elsewhere.
When l think of Stroma it makes me feel young again and it certainly restores my soul.
NlCK: Fragile isles face many perils.
But some, like Guernsey, rise to the challenge.
For centuries the islanders succeeded in turning the threat of war into a money-making venture.
Towers like this that pepper the shore are some 200 years old -
defences against possible invasion by the French running rampant under Napoleon.
The islanders learnt that during times of war different rules apply.
Rules that can be bent to your advantage.
As the threat of invasion rose, riches rolled in with the waves.
Guernsey became a ''treasure island'' thanks to the ill-gotten gains
of the infamous Guernsey privateers.
Described as the ''Despair of France'',
these private warships were fast and heavily armed with determined crews.
Guernsey was the ideal base for privateers to strike
at rich cargo vessels sailing the English Channel.
But how could these Guernsey bandits get away with plundering booty
from the big boys of Europe?
l'm searching for evidence of their exploits.
Some locals still benefit from those long-lost wars.
Peter de Sausmarez is a descendant of a famous Guernsey privateer.
To the family he's Grande Matthieu - Great Matthew.
- This is the Grande Matthieu... - Centre-stage in your portrait gallery here.
Well, very important, yes. We're all descended from him.
And of course he was the one who sowed the seeds of the family recovery and fortune again.
And what evidence do you have that he was involved in privateering?
Well, l've got a few letters he wrote, and these are examples of letter books.
- Yes. - But these ones we found of 1 7...
- 1 2. - ..1 2. So very early on.
- So Matthew is in at the beginning. - Right at the beginning.
And here is a letter here saying,
''l'm writing you on behalf of Thomas de Marchant
to offer him a privateer ship of eight guns and to recruit some sailors.''
You had to have weapons of inducement, and we've got some rather fine examples here.
This is what the seamen would be using.
This is interesting because this is French.
You can see it's very basic and very simple, but one thing is absolutely tip-top, is the blade.
- Look at that. - All the effort has been put into this blade.
lndeed, yes.
lf you can imagine people coming aboard and waving these, you know.
- (Laughter) - Either like that or slash, l think.
- Shall we put it back in the scabbard now? - Perhaps it would be safer there, wouldn't it?
- Yeah. - Very good.
- l think you'd make quite a good privateer - Do you think?
lt would be quite fun, wouldn't it?
Strong-arm tactics soon built up fortunes.
The gains may have been ill-gotten but these weren't pirates.
The privateers had powerful friends.
The British, worried about French invasion, welcomed attacks on the foreign ships.
So much so, the Privateers got a contract from the King.
This is a ''Letter of Marque'', basically a pirate's licence to operate legally.
lt's dated, ''the year of our Lord one thousand, eight hundred and four.''
1 804.
At the top up here is a wonderful portrait of King George lll,
and down on the bottom is the King's royal seal.
Now, this letter allows the bearer to ''lawfully apprehend, seize and take all ships,
vessels and goods belonging to the French Republic.''
This is a royal permit to plunder.
The Crown encouraged Guernsey boatmen to be a thorn in the side of the French.
And the privateers had home advantage against passing ships.
Skipper Roger Perrot has local knowledge of these treacherous seas.
What would it have been like trying to navigate through these islands under sail,
no engines, without an electronic chart plotter like the one you've got here?
Well, just hell. l mean, l would not have liked to have been sailing a really big ship
around here in privateering time.
But they were brilliant sailors. We're armchair sailors really, aren't we?
This is a really dangerous part of the world.
l mean, we're going to go over some really rather nasty rocks in a moment.
- Those rocks are quite close, aren't they? - Yeah.
Fear not!
Daredevil sailors giving the French a bloody nose in the Napoleonic Wars.
Was that how the islanders regarded the privateers?
ln terms of Guernsey's society it was considered to be an honourable profession until the 1 820s,
which is way after the end of the Napoleonic War.
So would privateers have been celebrated on shore?
Oh, yes, absolutely, and most of the ships were made in Guernsey as well.
l suppose privateering was considered to be more of a middle-class occupation.
And when you sort of became nouveau riche and moved up an echelon,
then you went into the Navy, the Royal Navy, where you could still make a lot of money.
Many of the islanders shared the spoils of the privateers'plundering raids,
as local historian Annette Henry knows.
They weren't exactly following the principles of Fair Trade, were they?
Not really, no, but it...
ln times of war you have to do what you can,
and living on an island we needed to make money.
- And was it lucrative? - lt was incredibly lucrative.
One could amass a fortune of... well, there's one instance in 1 799
of a Mr LeMessurier amassing a fortune of £21 2,000 Sterling then in 1 799.
Equate that to today's terms - we're looking at a quarter of a billion pounds in one year.
lt was said that a fifth went to the Sovereign,
two-thirds of the remainder went to the owner of the ship of war,
and the remainder went to the captain and crew.
The Sovereign was very happy to issue as many Letters of Marque's as possible.
The Privateers played a dangerous game in their tiny boats,
dodging the warring giants on both sides of the Channel.
But when peace settled on the seas their game was up.
Victory at Waterloo in 1 81 5 made defences against the French redundant.
Calm descended on home waters.
Our global trade thrived because the Royal Navy reigned supreme.
The British Empire was envied by foreign powers,
but our islands seemed impregnable to sea-born attack.
Then, early in the 20th century, the sky came crashing in on Great Yarmouth.
Tessa is about to relive a tale of terror from above.
TESSA: ln 1 91 5 we looked across the North Sea and trembled.
The Great War was tearing the continent apart.
And here on the quiet shores of Norfolk a terrifying new style of attack
was about to be unleashed by aerial invaders.
On the night of the 1 9th of January, 1 91 5,
townsfolk on the dark streets of Great Yarmouth
were transfixed by an eerie noise from the fog bank above.
An eyewitness described the sound as 20 bicycles charging down a hill,
then a brilliant flash appeared in the sky.
A searchlight from a flying machine illuminated the streets,
followed by a string of bomb blasts.
On that foggy night many people couldn't believe their eyes,
but later the local paper left no doubt.
A Zeppelin air raid.
The first on British shores.
With that attack on Great Yarmouth, the Germans unleashed three years of terror.
Aerial warfare was invented as the invaders out-smarted Britain's defenders.
Our planes were primitive with poor communications.
How could our islands resist the Zeppelins?
Suddenly the nation's streets had become the front line,
bombs rained down with fatal consequences.
Martha Taylor, a 72-year-old spinster was killed here. She died instantly.
Martha and fellow casualty Samuel Smith were the first Britons to die in an air raid.
The night attack on Great Yarmouth woke Britain up to a new weapon of terror.
Zeppelins were long-range killing machines carrying over a thousand pound of bombs.
They had hit Norfolk first, but the Germans had a bigger prize.
ln the summer they struck London.
95 died there by the year's end, and fear spread across the land.
Historian Graham Mottram knows why we struggled to shoot down the airships.
We were only, what, 1 1 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight.
So aircraft was still very limited.
We had, l think, it was 93 aeroplanes,
something like that at the outbreak of the First World War.
And, of course, the art of anti-aircraft gunnery was still very, very primitive.
We were looking at trying to modify artillery pieces
to try and shoot high in the air in the hope of bringing these things down.
The Zeppelins'night-time blitz would strike along the length and breadth of Britain,
killing hundreds during the First World War.
We scrambled to invent air defences from scratch.
The Royal Flying Corps were fighting on the Western Front,
so early protection of home shores relied largely on Royal Navy aircraft.
They flew from coastal airstrips, and the Navy also tried a desperate new tactic.
The aim was to intercept the airship raiders over the water,
which meant taking off from the sea.
You've got this 60-foot-long barge. On it there's a wooden deck,
and on that wooden deck we put a Sopwith Camel.
Towing it quickly across the North Sea into the teeth of the strong wind
meant there was enough flying wind across the deck.
- You get lift-off. - You get lift-off.
Let go of the piece of string that secures the aircraft at the back of the boat
and it leaps into the air.
- This is effectively a very early aircraft carrier. - That is precisely what it is.
A lot of the Zeppelin attacks, of course, occurred at night.
What were the challenges of flying in the dark?
Enormous. You know, we've got these little frail aeroplanes, unreliable engines,
People got disorientated in the dark,
often flying with a torch to be able to read the instruments.
There were fatalities, it was extremely dangerous.
Even if the fighter planes could find a Zeppelin in the pitch darkness,
it was still a David and Goliath struggle to destroy an airship.
Look at its size compared to a fighter plane of the same period.
lt's dwarfed by the Zeppelin.
To lift men and bombs a vast quantity of lighter-than-air hydrogen gas
was contained inside a massive frame.
The metal skeleton held enough gas-bags to survive many hits from a machine gun.
But the Zeppelin's greatest fear was fire!
Their hydrogen gas was highly flammable.
Could anyone conjure up a fiery ''magic bullet'' to save Britain from the Zeppelins?
Tony Edwards knows the secret of the new incendiary ammunition.
That was filled with phosphorous, and in the side of the bullet
there was a very, very small hole filled with solder.
When the bullet was fired, the bullet twisted up the barrel in the rifling, the solder melted,
and as the bullet left the muzzle of the gun it was spewing phosphorous.
Phosphorus ignites when in contact with the air.
lt sets light and it leaves a smoke trail, so it's burning all the way to its target.
Lethal to the Zeppelins, phosphorous is tricky stuff to handle.
Chemist Stephen Ashworth has made up a phosphorous solution.
Dip in a tissue, and when it dries out the phosphorous comes in contact with air,
and it should spontaneously ignite.
- lt's sort of like waiting for a magic trick almost. - Oh, yes.
Oh, yes. That was extraordinary, out of nowhere.
That's right.
As well as phosphorous shells, by 1 91 6 our armoury also included bullets
with an explosive nitro-glycerine core.
Now we had the chemical weapons to kill the Zeppelins.
But it would take brave men to try.
l've got a precious album that belonged to Egbert Cadbury, a courageous Zeppelin hunter.
Cadbury was based in Great Yarmouth.
Originally he was a Navy pilot, but in 1 91 8 he was co-opted into the newly-formed RAF.
On the night of the 5th of August, 1 91 8,
Major Cadbury launched the last attack against the airship invaders,
when the Germans unleashed the super Zeppelin.
The L70, the most advanced Zeppelin yet.
Almost 700 feet long with seven engines, capable of carrying 1 0,000 pounds of bombs.
l've actually got a priceless recording of Major Cadbury recounting his struggle
against the fearsome Zeppelin on that fateful night.
We received warning from naval patrols at sea
that hostile aircraft were approaching The Wash at great height.
l immediately flew off in pursuit.
Unbeknown to Cadbury he wasn't only taking on the super Zeppelin -
at the helm was this man, Commander Peter Strasser,
architect of the Zeppelin war on Britain.
Desperate to prove the worth of his airships against aircraft.
Today you can't fly planes like this at night,
but we can relive Cadbury's hunt for the super Zeppelin.
Despite being three times the length of a jumbo jet
the L70 was not easy to find in pitch blackness.
CADBURY: You sat in the cockpit and had to depend upon your eyesight
to spot the airship against the starry sky.
lt was rather like trying to find a fly in a darkened bedroom.
TESSA: The airship was almost over the coast.
To intercept it Cadbury knew he would have to push his plane
to altitudes close to its physical limit,
where the air was so thin the engine was at risk of stalling.
ln an open cockpit at 1 7,000 feet there would have been a biting wind,
the engine would have been rattling, spitting oil.
lt would have been impossible to hear a Zeppelin over the racket,
but miraculously Cadbury caught a glimpse of his prey.
CADBURY: She looked simply immense as indeed she was,
being 300 yards long from stem to stern.
TESSA: Held aloft by 2.2 million cubic feet of flammable hydrogen.
A tiny incendiary bullet could bring the super Zeppelin down.
Gunner Bob Leckie made ready with his machine gun.
CADBURY: Suddenly the darkness was ripped open.
Bob Leckie gave her a few bursts of fire of tracer bullets.
TESSA: A hit.
CADBURY: And within a matter of seconds flames started to leap from her bows.
And as l banked away she went blazing down to the clouds 2,000 feet beneath us.
We lost sight of her as she continued her downward journey into the North Sea
nearly three miles below.
Strasser, the German Zeppelin Commander fell to his death,
his ambitious plans for more audacious airship raids died with him.
lt started over the Norfolk Coast and it ended there.
Sir Egbert Cadbury went on to manage his family's chocolate empire,
but he kept a souvenir.
This is a cigarette case made from lightweight aluminium taken from the super Zeppelin.
lt actually has Cadbury's signature inscribed on it.
A small reminder of a largely forgotten first Blitz on Britain,
when events on this coast shook the nation to its core.
NlCK: Our island shores bear the scars of conflicts long past.
But the dying sun hasn't quite obscured the age-old fears of invasion.
For some the pain of conquest is a living memory
that makes freedom something to cherish.
Those who remember the long dark night of Nazi occupation celebrate their liberty.
l'm proud to stand with them,
and think of the price people paid facing the invaders of our isles.