British family owned sea fort is technically 'the world's smallest country'

One family originally from the UK claims to live in the smallest sovereign country.

Located 12km off the Suffolk coast, a place called Sealand is home to one family.

Depending what you class as a country, it's technically nothing more than a small sea fort 12km off the Suffolk coast.

It was built by the UK government during the Second World War, in 1942, and then used for a couple of decades before being abandoned in 1956.

Then, in the 1960s, it got a new lease on life when radio DJ Paddy Roy Bates made it his base for pirate radio broadcasting.

This was around the time the UK passed the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act in 1967, which aimed to shut down pirate radio stations operating from ships and boats.

BEN STANSALL / Contributor / Getty

In response, Bates declared the fort to be the "Principality of Sealand," declaring independence from the UK.

Moving his family into the fort, Bates became the Prince of Sealand. Later in life, he moved back to the UK, and his son Michael took over operations.

These days, the family earns some income from a cockle-farming business.

Over the years, Sealand has seen its fair share of wild events.

It's seen its occupants taken hostage by a former Sealand prime minister's hired mercenaries, and Bates was also called to court after firing warning shots at the British Navy.

The Navy was demolishing abandoned forts, but Bates refused to let that happen to Sealand.

Whether Sealand is considered a real country depends on how you look at it but considers itself the world's smallest independent state.

Even a declassified UK government document described the outpost as a 'Cuba off the east coast of England,' according to a BBC report.

Zac Alsop / YouTube

Still, it has its own flag and national anthem, and in theory a process for acquiring a visa - although Sealand's website stresses: "It's crucial to understand that permission to submit a visa application is highly unlikely."

To this day, it's considered 'a micronation on HM Fort Roughs an offshore platform in the North Sea.'

George Dunford, co-author of Micronations: The Lonely Planet Guide to Home-Made Nations, said: “Sealand is a special case because it has got away with it for so long and ducked laws."

“[...] They had a few tries and there were takeover attempts, but it survived. It’s a real survivor of the micronations community."

While the majority of us will probably never live there or get a chance to visit, it's interesting to wonder what life would be like on a tiny platform for decades at a time.

Probably the best showcase of what the inside of the fort actually looks like was given by YouTuber Zac Alsop a couple of years ago as he managed to arrange an exclusive visit.