Original subtitles

A rusting ship anchored off the English coast,

bearing the scars of an armed attack.

They were in international waters, and that was supposed

to keep them safe.

And they were safe until the raiders arrived.

A Lebanese high rise of glitz and glamour consumed

by hate and fear.

The militias are going to have to go floor by floor, room by room,

chucking grenades, firing blindly until nobody is shooting back.

A Japanese curiosity caught in a web of corruption.

He was a very high-flying businessman with a lot

of big plans and a tendency to cut corners ethically in his businesses.

And a strange structure at the heart of a Florida suburb that began

as a dream and turned into a nightmare.

It's one of the top murder capitals of South Florida.

We are waking this city back up.

Decaying relics...

...ruins of lost worlds...

...sights haunted by the past...

...their secrets waiting to be revealed.

On England's south-east coast, anchored in the Blackwater estuary,

is an illicit piece of pop culture history.

At first glance, this seems like a perfectly ordinary sight.

A ship moored in a waterway that leads out to the sea.

But look again.

There's something here that doesn't quite add up.

It has this strange mast sort of sprouting out from its centre.

What can it be used for?

Looking below deck, inside is everything you would expect

to find on an average ship.

With its wood panelling and brass instruments, the bridge feels

like something from another era.

Other elements come as a little bit of a surprise.

They really seem out of place here.

We find these strange machines, scattered microphones,

record players, album covers.

This is unmistakeably a broadcast studio.

What were they broadcasting and why was it so important to hide it?

Over the years, vessels like this were crewed by buccaneers

hellbent on liberating the masses -

not from their money, but from musical monotony.

There was a kind of joyful anarchy that took place on this ship,

and the authorities decided to put this to an end.

I came out here in 1984 when I was in my 20s.

The ship had only been at sea for about a year and a half or so,

having been refitted in Spain.

So it glistened in the sunlight and freshly painted,

it looked absolutely splendid and I was very excited to step on board.

Nigel Harris lived and worked on this former North Atlantic

fishing trawler for five years.

When he first boarded the vessel, the ship already had a storied past.

In 1976, she broke the world's record for biggest earnings

from a single catch, sailing into port with 200 tons

of cod in the hold.

But trawlers like this were becoming redundant, and in 1981

she was towed to a breaker's yard in Scotland,

where she'd be stripped out for parts.

Still in good condition, the ship was spotted by a new buyer

and put back to sea.

But these were no fishermen.

Nigel worked for an organisation that operated on

the wrong side of the law.

The authorities were keeping an eye on us all the time,

and getting boats to bring our diesel out

and finding skippers who would do it over and over again

became more and more difficult.

But when it worked, I must say, it did work well.

This is the Ross Revenge.

In the 1980s, it was the latest in a long line

of offshore pirate radio stations.

MUSIC

The concept began as a cunning antidote to the British

establishment's uptight attitude to 1960s popular music.

So we like to think of the 1960s as a great moment of change in music.

We talk about the British revolution, the Beatles,

the Rolling Stones, and of course, in the Americas

we have Motown music.

At that time, the BBC, the British Broadcasting Corporation,

were the only ones with a licence to broadcast on the radio.

But the rock and roll revolution sweeping the United States

had no place on British airwaves.

The BBC considered it to be immoral, favouring a bland diet

of news and light entertainment.

They would only play pop music for a few hours at the weekend.

All of these era-defining artists were releasing albums that people

just weren't able to listen to on traditional, conventional radio.

We must remember that Radio 1 did not exist,

so there was this massively underserved market.

So this was a business opportunity.

The government refused to license independent broadcasters.

But Irish music promoter Ronan O'Reilly

was determined to find a way to break the BBC monopoly.

Whilst the government could shut down anyone broadcasting illegally

on land, once you were in international waters,

you were beyond their power.

O'Reilly raised £250,000 to launch his passion project.

His new station soon began operating three miles off the British coast.

MUSIC

# Caroline, the sound of the nation... ♪

When Radio Caroline first started broadcasting in 1964,

they were at the forefront of the pirate radio revolution.

Suddenly, music fans could tune in and hear new artists

whenever they wanted.

♪ Caroline! ♪

By 1965, around 15 million Brits were tuning in to offshore

pirate radio on a daily basis.

The BBC didn't like it and neither did the British government.

Over the following decades, the authorities and the pirates

played a game of cat and mouse, with the government passing new laws

to shut them down and the pirates finding new ways to keep

the music playing.

In 1980, Radio Caroline's latest ship, the Mi Amigo,

sank during a violent storm.

The team needed a new boat.

Enter the Ross Revenge.

Official broadcasts of the new Radio Caroline began at noon

on August 20th, 1983.

This studio you see now is the main on air original studio

on the Ross Revenge.

This is the mixer we used and still works as far as I know.

Microphone faders here for turntables.

It was a great place to be, lots of fun out here.

I used to play a lot of Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac.

Electric Light Orchestra has always been a favourite.

Ross Revenge didn't just house Radio Caroline, but also

other radio stations.

Well, the Dutch service operating from Studio 2 next door

here on the Ross Revenge was in my day called Radio Monique,

and they were based in Holland.

All secret again, all under the cover of darkness, so to speak.

But Radio Caroline was treading a fine line, and the British

and Dutch governments' patience was running out.

Over time, things did get more complicated.

The authorities became more wary of boats getting out here,

so the time between our supply boats would get longer

and longer and longer as things became more difficult.

Throughout the summer of 1989, Radio Caroline kept on broadcasting

despite increasing harassment from the authorities.

On August 18th, a ship chartered by the UK government pulled up

alongside the Ross Revenge, asking to come aboard

and discuss the ship's future.

When the crew rejected their demands, it returned to port.

The next day, when Nigel was hosting his morning show,

all hell broke loose.

I was on the air in here and it was a misty morning,

and I looked through that porthole out to the stern of the ship

and through the mist, this great big Dutch tug appeared.

It came alongside, slammed alongside.

Faced with a 30 strong armed boarding party, the small crew

were in no position to stop them.

There were two or three of us in here and they came in,

manhandled us out of the studios, closed the door on us,

and then started to pull wires out of the back of the mixer.

I just don't understand how this can be happening.

It's a strange feeling in your stomach that

is this the end? It can't be.

At 1:08 pm, the Ross Revenge was silenced and Radio Caroline

had gone off the airwaves.

While the pirate crew was rounded up and interrogated,

the authorities went to work.

Studio equipment, records and tapes were all boxed up and confiscated.

They even cut the aerial cables from the tower.

They knew that they couldn't remove the massive transmitters held

below decks, so they simply took sledgehammers

to the delicate electronics.

When the raiders had finally gone, Nigel was left

to assess the damage.

We saw beer bottles lying around everywhere, so it was almost

like they come out here on a bit of a jolly, bit of drinking,

a bit of smashing, and then they all went home.

The pirate DJs didn't give up.

They scavenged replacement parts and quickly got back on air.

We had so much help from listeners as well.

They donated food, they donated records.

But the writing was on the wall.

In November 1990, the ship was forced to stop broadcasting

due to a lack of fuel and essential supplies.

It was left anchored in the English Channel to await its fate.

In 1991, the Ross Revenge lost its moorings and began to drift

onto a sandbank, and when the ship was eventually towed

into port, its 27-year broadcast history came to an end.

Pirate radio, although illegal, is credited with paving the way

for popular music to be given a voice in the United Kingdom.

The Ross Revenge is part of that legacy.

Today, the Ross Revenge is open to the public for visits,

but keeping a ship of this size in good condition is no easy feat.

Well, there's still a lot of work to be done on the Ross Revenge.

It can't sit on the water forever.

Unless this work is done, its future is uncertain.

In the Lebanese capital of Beirut,

modern buildings conceal the reminders of a city divided.

You have all these gleaming high rises and fancy

shops and restaurants.

But in the middle of all, this is one tall building

that is an absolute wreck.

This does not look like normal wear and tear.

And you go inside, it's...

...there's no clues as to what it was.

Everything's been stripped out.

In the beginning, this was a beacon of progress

and the height of extravagance in a modern city.

It became a ferocious symbol of struggle.

So how did it fall from that place to this destroyed shell

of its former self?

Haunting clues are revealed etched into the crumbling walls.

It's almost like you can see some kind of clash of civilisations

playing out in the graffiti.

There's some in Arabic, but then you also

see Christian crosses.

This is a building that had gone from a beautiful Middle Eastern

destination into the very epitome of hell on earth.

Marwan Ayoubi first came here in 1976 when he was 17 years old.

When it was built two years earlier, it was the talk of the town.

But Marwan didn't check in as a guest.

He was here for a very different purpose.

This is the Holiday Inn Hotel,

once the pinnacle of sophistication at the heart of a destination city,

different from the one we see today.

In the 1970s,

Beirut is

a Western-looking,

French-speaking city,

and people from around the world

are happy to fly to Beirut

to enjoy the Mediterranean climate.

It's a place of openness and a kind of pride in their ability,

which was unusual in the Middle East at any time,

to coexist with so many different cultures -

Christians, Jews, Muslims.

In this booming cosmopolitan metropolis,

impressive new hotels sprung up in the downtown port district,

including this one in 1974.

The Holiday Inn was a very ambitious hotel chain,

and they would open these kind of flagship hotels

in important cities around the world to advertise the brand.

It's the tallest hotel in the city.

It has got a revolving restaurant on the roof,

which is possibly

the most 1970s thing ever.

It opened in a time when the future for Beirut and Lebanon

seemed very bright.

But below the surface, tension was building

between the country's Muslim and Christian populations.

So, while wealthy tourists and other visitors were partying,

the politics in Lebanon were changing radically.

These sectarian rivalries had been growing

for over two decades.

Like many of the countries in the Middle East,

the borders of Lebanon were more or less imposed on it

by European powers.

The French established the current borders after World War I.

When Lebanon was given its independence in 1943,

power is distributed among the various religious groups -

you know, the Maronite Christians, the Muslims and the Druze.

It makes no-one happy.

It's just a matter of how long it's going to take

for Lebanon to fall apart.

After the founding of Israel in 1948,

Palestinians were forcibly removed from their homes.

In the years that followed, the refugee crisis only intensified,

and by 1968, 400,000 people

had sought shelter in Lebanon.

But that introduced a new radicalism into Lebanese politics.

And you start to see the emergence of these sectarian militias

to defend Maronite interests or Shia interests or Sunni interests

or Druze interests.

All of these different religious and cultural groups

that had coexisted peacefully,

suddenly they were at each other's throats.

A year after the Holiday Inn opens,

the civil war kicks off.

The city's hotel district quickly became the epicentre

of the violence.

Beirut is kind of bifurcated into a Christian East Beirut

and a Muslim West Beirut,

separated by something called the Green Line.

And the Holiday Inn and the other, you know, fancy hotels in Beirut,

just happened to be situated along what is now the Green Line.

In any military encounter, you want to control the high ground.

This is how the Union Army won the Battle of Gettysburg

in the Civil War.

And in Beirut, these tall hotels, they were the high ground.

The Holiday Inn was the tallest of them all

in what would become known as the Battle of the Hotels.

GUNFIRE

And in the early years of the civil war, the Phalange militia,

the Maronite Christians, they control the Holiday Inn,

while the neighbouring Phoenicia Hotel and other structures

are controlled by the Lebanese National Movement militias.

In March of 1976, a coalition of Muslim forces

launched an attack against the heavily guarded Holiday Inn.

Marwan Ayoubi led a small unit into the high-stakes fight.

Muslim militias, they penetrate the hotel,

they get control of the lobby and the lower floors

and they start to celebrate, "We've taken the hotel."

It seemed like a victory. What they didn't fully appreciate

was that there were still dozens of Christian militia fighters

on the floors above them.

The result was just total chaos.

For three days and three nights,

bitter fighting raged across the 26 floors of the Holiday Inn.

Over 40 men were killed and hundreds severely injured

before the Muslim militia emerged victorious.

All the world sees the violence in Beirut

on their television screens every night.

Everyone sees once-great hotels

dissolve into a welter of explosions.

The conflict continued to ravage the country for the next 14 years.

During that time, warring factions periodically occupied the hotel.

Any trace of its former grandeur was obliterated by the struggle.

And the civil war really isn't resolved

until the Taif Accord in 1989,

when, you know, the various groups are all coaxed

into this peace arrangement -

basically, giving certain portfolios of government

to the different groups.

Those who fought in the war had to reconcile the many years

spent fighting against their fellow countrymen.

Over the years, the Port of Beirut has been revitalised,

while the Holiday Inn has sat untouched, caught in a legal limbo.

The ownership is split between a group of Lebanese investors

who want to refurbish it

and a Kuwaiti shareholder who wants to tear it down and start over.

For now, it stands there as this somewhat horrifying symbol

of just how far off the rails a modern society can go.

In the hills west of Niigata, Japan,

stands a place that defies rational explanation.

The first thing your eye is drawn to is this huge sea of solar panels.

But right on their edge, there's a very unexpected structure.

You see an enormous Russian-style cathedral,

complete with the onion-type domes and crosses on top of each one.

What's it doing here in the middle of rural Japan?

For two countries that were sworn enemies for many years,

something doesn't add up,

yet whoever ordered its construction clearly invested heavily.

With the twisted remains of the stained-glass windows

and the gold paint, you can still get a sense of its faded grandeur.

If you look straight up, who's staring back at you?

Jesus.

But a fire-damaged complex next to the church

suggests faith alone was not enough to save this place.

It seems there was some kind of cross-cultural tribute

intended here,

but one that obviously didn't work out that well in the end.

Unchecked ambition and corruption is what brought this dream to an end.

Sasaguchi Yuji is the caretaker of this site today.

When he came here in the 1990s, it was as a paying guest.

This is the Russian Village.

It began as an expression of friendship

between two former rivals.

Traditionally, relations between Japan and Russia

were not good,

but towards the end of the 20th century, something happened

that established a certain bond between the people.

In 1964, a severe earthquake hit Niigata.

The ground liquefied,

collapsing bridges and buildings,

even buckling train tracks.

In the wake of the destruction,

help came from the most unlikely of places.

The earthquake killed about three dozen people,

destroyed thousands of homes. It was a real crisis.

And then a month later, in the port,

a huge shipment of wood for construction, for rebuilding,

arrived from two small cities in Russia

that had heard about the disaster.

It was a gesture that would allow those who had lost their homes

to rebuild.

The people of Niigata never forgot that kindness.

Mr Ryutaro Omori was one of those people.

Ryutaro Omori was a local businessman

who rose through the ranks to become the president

of the Niigata Central Bank.

The Japanese economy was booming,

and the Japanese people had a lot of money and they wanted to spend it.

They wanted to travel.

It led to a boom in building theme parks around Japan.

And Omori had an idea for not just one theme park,

but a whole chain of them,

so he started with his Russian Village.

With Niigata's connection to Russia,

and the landscape of pine trees and snowy mountains,

it must have felt like the obvious place to build it.

It had reportedly cost $150 million to develop.

On the 1st September 1993,

Russian Village opened to great fanfare.

So, while people were at the Russian Village,

they could eat at a Russian restaurant serving Russian food.

There was a little museum. There was even an aquarium

that had a certain species of seal that lives in the Siberian Arctic.

There used to be areas filled with souvenir shops,

a variety of fast-food stands,

places where they would demonstrate Russian folk crafts.

In later years, the park even opened a bizarre exhibition

of fake life-sized taxidermy woolly mammoths!

The star attraction was the park's most faithful offering.

The church was closely based on an actual Russian church

called the Cathedral of the Nativity.

It's about 100 miles outside of Moscow.

They went to great lengths to make it as authentic as possible,

even hiring a Russian painter

to create the murals decorating the ceilings and pillars.

There would have been rows and rows of pews

facing a raised stage at the front of the church,

where there would have been a pipe organ

and all kinds of Orthodox iconography hanging from the walls.

I mean, if you were looking for somewhere a bit different,

somewhere quite grand to get married,

where better than here?

Fortunately for the bride and groom, they had plenty of facilities

next door for the reception.

The Mura Hotel had 20 rooms,

including luxurious suites on the top floor,

perhaps where the newlyweds spent their wedding night.

Although little remains today,

from the size of the spaces,

you get a real sense of just how grand it would have been.

But in 1994,

only months after Omori's bizarre venture first opened,

cracks began to show.

So once you looked at the church, had a Russian meal, seen a show,

you were ready to go home.

With its poor attendance, the numbers just weren't adding up

for the Russian Village.

Somehow, the park managed to keep going for the next seven years,

and in 2001 damning allegations came to light

revealing what was going on behind closed doors.

The visionary behind the park

and the head of the bank that financed it, Ryutaro Omori,

had criminal charges filed against him.

His bank reported a deficit of 168.7 billion yen.

That's about $1.3 billion today.

Omori made a lot of loans that were somewhat dubious,

and one of the shakiest was to his own Russian Village.

Even when he knew that the finances were not that strong,

he pushed through another loan for the project,

and that one really got him in trouble.

Omori was forced to resign as head of the bank.

While he was awaiting trial,

a group of Russian financiers tried to help save the park.

Their investment was too little, too late.

Whilst his park was shutting down,

in 2003, Omori was sentenced to three years in prison.

Just two years later, he died.

In 2004, a short-lived attempt

to reopen the park ended in failure.

Many of the buildings were then demolished

and vandals destroyed what remained.

The future for this area seems to be in the solar energy being generated

in this massive solar farm right next door to the Russian Village.

The hopes that people might someday travel to this compound

were really dashed many years ago.

In Miami Dade County, Florida,

are relics of a storybook fantasy brought to life.

This looks like a typical Miami suburb,

but then you notice that the streets have some pretty unexpected names.

You have Baghdad Avenue, Sharazad Boulevard and Sinbad Avenue.

In the middle of town is what looks like a crumbling palace,

which, much like the street names,

appears wildly out of place in Florida.

It's got these pink domes, towering minarets, castle-like battlements

and a walled courtyard.

It seems to be a mix of various eastern influences.

There's something a bit fantastical about it all.

Exteriors don't really match the interiors.

They're offices, they're spaces that would be used

for everyday activities.

They're not elaborate, like the outside of the building.

This construction is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.

These structures aren't as big or impressive,

but their coordinated style suggests there was once a wider vision

for this place.

For a time, this was a fantasy that you could buy into,

but the dream would be very tragically short-lived.

This city is one of very few in the entire country

of the United States that was built

on a storybook, quite literally,

so it's inspiring through and through.

Alex Van Mecl began digging into the extraordinary history

of this region when he bought his first home here in September 2021.

It was very exciting

and was the beginning of a very long journey

to uncover a lot about the city that has, in some instances,

never been seen or told before.

This curious structure was to be the beating heart

of a grand vision to transform this once-unpopulated area

into a thriving city.

The driving force behind it

was American Renaissance man Glenn H Curtiss.

Curtiss was a pioneer of American aviation

and one of the nation's wealthiest men.

He had helped develop the first aircraft carrier for the US Navy

and built the first seaplane.

While Curtiss was on holiday in Florida,

he recognised the money-making potential of this area.

In the years after the First World War,

Florida experienced a land boom.

The number of skilled workers in the country was rising,

and they were benefiting from higher wages and paid vacations.

Suddenly, people had the resources to travel and to buy vacation homes.

Everybody had cars, everyone had a Model T.

They wanted to be in the sun, and there was no better place

to go than Florida.

Curtiss and his partners bought 17,000 acres of land,

and Curtiss entered a new business - real estate development.

But he also wants to create really unique, special communities,

not just your run-of-the-mill tract homes

that normally dotted the landscape.

Fortunately, there was a new craze that was sweeping the nation

and it would inspire his next project, Opa-locka.

Opa-locka was to be something entirely unique,

never before attempted in the United States.

It was a big gamble, based on architecture and literature

from the Islamic world.

In 1925, the architect Bernhardt Muller

read the collection of Middle Eastern folktales

known as The Thousand And One Nights.

He was so inspired that he relived it in his dreams that night.

He soon came up with a vision of a city

built around the theme and design of those stories.

And in Curtiss, Muller had a partner with the resources

to make it happen.

An advertisement that was placed in the Miami Herald in 1926

began with the words "one thousand and one reasons".

It encouraged investors to get in on the ground floor

of a never-to-be-repeated opportunity.

This administration building was intended to be an icon

of the city's success.

The construction of this building began in early 1926.

It took approximately seven months to construct.

At that time, they estimated the cost at $150,000.

Its primary focus - to sell the idea and dream

of what it was to become an Opa-lockan.

This was to be a completely self-sufficient community

with its own airport, golf course,

pools, parks, country club, zoo -

all the things that make life fun.

Muller personally approved each and every design.

He specified all the paint colours and finishings to be used,

and even suggested landscaping around the buildings.

In less than a year, over 30 homes were built and residents moved in,

while the rest of the city's construction was still under way.

Curtiss's ambitious risk appeared to be paying off.

But before the city could be completed, Mother Nature interfered.

In 1926, a massive hurricane swept through the Miami area,

and although it didn't really affect Opa-locka,

it affected Florida as a whole and sent it into this economic tailspin.

Florida's reputation as heaven on earth

was shattered in the wake of the destruction.

Suddenly, both investors and new residents

became harder and harder to find.

But railways had helped other planned communities

in Florida prosper,

and Curtiss was certain a new train line coming in 1927

would keep his vision alive.

He also had one last trick up his sleeve.

When the first train arrived on January 8th, 1927,

the city decided to put on a show.

On board was the governor of the state,

the president of the railway and a host of other dignitaries.

They were greeted by something straight out of the movies -

a representative of the company, dressed as the Grand Vizier

of the Empire of Opa-locka,

charged on horseback out of the administration building.

He was flanked by others dressed as Arabian horsemen

who were racing out to meet the Iron Horse.

Homeowners from all across the city joined in the celebrations.

Nobody wanted to see Opa-locka crash and burn.

Most of the town had costumes

that had been rented from New York theatres,

and the whole community put on a show for visitors.

Essentially, they got together to commemorate the new beginning

of what was to become

this flourishing and very extraordinarily designed community.

The event was a big success,

and newspapers gave it plenty of coverage,

all of which provided great advertising for the city.

These days, that type of naked cultural appropriation

would definitely be frowned upon,

though there are certainly outrageous stunts

pulled by real estate developers on a daily basis.

The so-called Arabian fantasy may have captured people's attention,

but it failed to get them to open their wallets.

The future of Curtiss's $1.5 million investment was uncertain.

Less than two years later,

the aspiring city was dealt another devastating blow.

In the wake of the Wall Street crash,

things really weren't looking good for Opa-locka.

Curtiss pulled out all the stops to try and salvage his dream

and save his city's struggling residents.

He helped pay for people's landscaping,

he started paying people's mortgages.

I think he had every reason to believe that Opa-locka

still could become as great, as thriving as a Coral Gables

or Miami Beach, or even Palm Beach at that time.

Curtiss was convinced the development could continue expanding

after the economy recovered.

Fate disagreed.

On the 23rd of July 1930,

the aviation pioneer died suddenly after an attack of appendicitis.

The driving force behind Opa-locka evaporated with him.

It is my school of thought

that Curtiss would very much have stuck his vision through,

and it still would have been the fully built environment

that he dreamed of it becoming had he not passed away.

In the years that followed, the suburb declined

beyond all recognition and its crime rate soared.

By 2009, the one-time centrepiece of Opa-locka

had been left to fall into ruin.

John H Taylor Jr was elected mayor of Opa-locka in 2022.

The city he grew up in was very different

from the one originally envisioned.

I'm 34 years old and Opa-locka is all that I know.

During the early '70s,

'80s, '90s, early 2000s,

they called us one of the top murder capitals of South Florida.

What was once an area that was drug-infested, crime-ridden

is not the same Opa-locka that you see today.

Our crime is down 30%.

I wanted the community where my daughter and my family can grow,

live, play and be safe in.

Today, Mayor Taylor hopes to finish what Glenn H Curtiss started.

We want it to be a cultural arts centre.

We want birthday parties here.

We want you to make memories here.

And by 2026, you won't be able to recognise Opa-locka.

We are waking this city back up.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media