Teresa Santoski

To say there’s been a lot going on in the news this past year would be an understatement. No matter how much you prioritize staying informed, you’ll inevitably miss the occasional headline due to the sheer volume of information out there.

It’s therefore no surprise that a major news story from several months ago just made it onto my radar. What’s more surprising is that it apparently affected me personally and I had no idea.

It started a few months into the pandemic, when I decided to go ahead and do something I’d wanted to do for years. I used to write a daily column on unusual holidays and odd bits of history called Daily TWiP, and one of my columns was about the founding of the Principality of Sealand in 1967.

The Principality of Sealand is a micronation that was established on an abandoned World War II sea fort off the coast of England. Because this sea fort, known previously as Fort Roughs, was situated in international waters at that time, it was claimed as a sovereign nation by Patrick Roy Bates and his family.

For a fee, you can become a member of Sealand’s nobility, and you can also purchase a piece of their territory. Though the noble titles and property deeds are not legally recognized, I thought it would be great fun to be able to tell people that I’m a lady and that I rule over a square foot of ocean.

I then promptly forgot about that – for about ten years.

But during those early months of staying at home, an ad for Sealand’s noble titles popped up on my social media, and I decided life was too short to put off doing things I wanted to do, even if some might consider them frivolous.

So now, I am a lady, and I have the paperwork to prove it. I also “own” one square foot of Sealand’s ocean territory.

I could have paid to be a baroness, a countess or a duchess, but none of those titles sounded quite right when coupled with my name. To my ears, Lady Teresa Santoski has a better ring to it than Duchess Teresa Santoski, even if it does have a lower ranking amongst the nobility.

When one is a lady, however, one can hardly put one’s important documents into boring, ordinary frames. Working with my favorite framer, I was able to special-order two ornate gold frames that would do my noble title and my property deed justice.

The frame for my noble title arrived without any issues, but the frame for my property deed never made it. Something about a shipping container sinking, according to my framer.

The manufacturer sent a replacement, but it was the wrong style. What with one thing and another, I did not receive the correct frame until late February of this year.

With all the recent news about the container ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal, I asked my framer if she knew anything more about the sunken shipping container that had claimed my frame. Given that my life tends toward the odd, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that the container was at the bottom of the piece of ocean I own.

It turned out that my frame had been one of many items onboard the container ship ONE Apus, which made headlines back in December for losing nearly 2,000 containers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean during a storm.

Well, there went my theory. My square foot of ocean is in the Atlantic, not the Pacific.

How did I manage to miss such a significant news story? It’s one of the biggest cargo losses in shipping history. But then again, the headlines at the time were dominated by the presidential election and emergency approval of COVID-19 vaccines, which were a little more attention-grabbing than the shipping news.

Had it not been for the memes about the Ever Given getting stuck in the Suez Canal trending on social media, that incident might likewise have escaped my notice. Any memes about the ONE Apus losing its cargo failed to make it to my trending topics category on Twitter.

Despite a delay of several months, both of my documents from Sealand are now appropriately framed and ready for display. I can now complicate the family genealogy by leading future generations to believe we have nobility in the family tree. Just wait until my great-great-grandnieces and nephews find out they have to rent a boat to get to our teeny-tiny “ancestral estate.”

No matter how engaged we are with current events, we will inevitably miss a news story or two. The headlines fly so fast and furious that it’s impossible to keep up with them all. I’d like to think that the most important events, especially those that affect us personally, will eventually make their way to us, but sometimes that happens later rather than sooner.

Now that I’m a lady, perhaps I can recruit some vassals to keep track of the news for me. They might have difficulty reading a newspaper while treading water, though.

Tete-a-tete is published monthly. Teresa Santoski can be reached at tsantoski@gmail.com or via www.teresasantoski.com.

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