The
island of Malta is located in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and
North Africa. The name Malta comes from
the ancient Greek word “melity” and
it means “sweet
honey”.
There
are actually five main islands belonging to Malta, three of which are
inhabited. Their capital city is Valetta
on the north coast of the main island Malta.
With a total land area of only 122 square miles, and a total population
approaching half a million, they are one of the most densely populated
countries in the world. Tourism is one
of their main industries, with more than
a million visitors coming to the islands each year.
There are two official languages in
Malta, English and Maltese. The Maltese
language traces its earliest origins back to a form of ancient Arabic spoken
previously on the nearby island of Sicily. However, the Maltese language is
written with the English script, not the Arabic cursive writing.
In ancient times there
were two unique forms of life on the island; the dwarf elephant and the pigmy
hippopotamus, each only half the size of its African relatives, though both are
long since extinct.
In prehistoric times, the earliest
colonists constructed Neolithic Stone Temples which they say today
are the oldest stone structures anywhere in the world. The islands were colonized by the Phoenicians
from the Middle East, and they were followed by settlers from Greece. Malta was conquered successively, among
others, by Carthage, Rome, the Arabs, Sicily, France, and then by England.
The unique toy dog, the Maltese, is
quite small, with long silky hair reaching to the ground. This dog was highly favored by noble women
back two thousand years ago.
The Roman poet Martial wrote a poem
about a Maltese named Issa that was owned by his friend Publius, Governor of
Malta. During the winter of 60 AD, St.
Paul was shipwrecked on Malta, at St. Paul’s Bay, as recorded in the Book of Acts
chapter 27. He befriended Governor Publius
who converted to the new Christianity, along with the entire population of the
island.
In more recent times, the British
constructed a naval fort at Delimara Point on the extreme eastern edge of the
island of Malta in 1876. The name
Delimara in their language means the shadow of a woman.
The story of the BBC Central
Mediterranean Relay Station seems to begin not in Malta, but back on the island
of Cyprus, in the year 1959. The World
Radio TV Handbook for that year (1959) lists a radio broadcasting station with
the slogan Radio Independent Transmitting Unit, ITU.
In
1959, as the WRTVHB states, a broadcast unit was on the air at the British
communication station at Episkopi with a 3½ hour daily service in English from 1200 - 1530 UTC on 7130 kHz
at a power level of ½ kW. A service in Arabic was also in the planning
stage.
It is probable that this new shortwave service
in the Middle East, temporary and experimental, was intended to grow into a
larger facility akin to the earlier Radio Sharq al Adna, previously on the air on
this same island, Cyprus. This new radio
service, under the title Radio Independent Transmitting Unit ITU, was on the
air for no more than a few months, and the entire project was seemingly
trans-ferred to the island of Malta. The
WRTVHB listing states that a QSL response was available by letter.
In the early
part of this same year 1959, a party of BBC personnel made a visit to Malta to
assess the radio situation on the island.
They rendered their official report in April.
A new BBC relay station, designated
as the BBC Central Mediterranean Relay Station was soon afterwards
installed in the Royal Navy Fort at Delimara Point on the extreme easternmost
point on the island of Malta. This new
relay station with its two mediumwave transmitters at 20 kW each was
inaugurated during the following year 1960.
The licensed output power from this BBC relay station, which was owned
and operated by the Diplomatic Wireless Service, was 10 kW, and only one
transmitter was ever on the air at any one time.
Programming
was on the air ten hours a day in two sessions and it was a relay of the BBC
Arabic Service which was beamed towards Libya and Tunisia. The introductory channel when this station
was inaugurated was 1079 kHz. Then in
March of the following year (1961), the
channel was changed to 1178 kHz.
However, in November 1968, the BBC
announced that they planned to close this station. But instead, it remained on the air, and in
September 1969 the frequency was again changed, this time to 1546 kHz. Two years later, another change was made to
1511 kHz. Then in February 1973, at the
end of nearly 13 years of service, this BBC Central Mediterranean Relay Station
was indeed
closed, supposedly due to a request from Egypt.
The
station was donated to the radio broadcasting authority in Malta, and they
reactivated it with two channels on the air simultaneously, 998 & 1546 kHz, each at 20 kW. One channel was programmed in Italian &
Arabic,
and the other in Maltese. However, the
entire facility was soon afterwards dismantled and re-installed at Bezbezija,
some ten miles distant, almost in the center of the island.
The
fort at Delimara Point was subsequently abandoned, and soon afterwards it was
leased to a pig farmer. Finally in 2005,
the land was transferred to Heritage Malta and plans were implemented for
turning the location into a museum and tourist site.
(AWR/Wavescan/NWS 271 via Adrian Peterson)