The Bates moved aboard Sealand, probably the rustiest, creaky, tiny and precarious country in the world. Bates had ambitions to make his platform principality a tax-free, rule-free international banking center. A buccaneer of a German businessman once captured the platform while Sealand's royal family was buying groceries onshore. But Bates hired a helicopter, came down a rope and took back his dominion at gunpoint