We've talked about a former battle station in the North Sea (actually, not technically an Anticipatory Jurisdiction because it is already recognised by the UK's Courts, if not by the UK government), a planned lump of concrete in the Caribbean and another off the Marshall Islands. Several years ago, your editor, writing for another magazine who commissioned a piece on the future of the offshore sector in 2025 predicted banks based on satellites orbiting the earth (the same piece predicted a ring of satellites (such was announced after the article was submitted but before it appeared) and major supermarket chains operating banks (the first was announced about three weeks after the piece appeared - although they have so far stuck to personal banking and investments).

Well, the latest anticipatory jurisdiction (we've invented this phrase for a bit of fun - let's see how long it takes for inter-governmental bodies to start to use it as if it has some import) goes some way towards the off-world banking idea. It's a boat.

Freedom Ship is planned to be a floating community, moving for 30% of the year and for the remaining 70% parked off various "exciting tourist destinations."

It's a big project in more ways than one - physically it will be almost a mile long, it will have 200 acres of open space including parkland, an inboard marina, a fleet of aircraft and hydrofoils so that residents and visitors can get on and off even between stopovers, it will have a shopping mall ("one of the World's largest") and, comfortingly, will be "virtually fireproof." The ship will deliver up to 40,000 "tourists" to its destinations, and will therefore be "eagerly anticipated" wherever it chooses to visit. The ship, itself, will provide a major market for local businesses such as agriculture. So it is claimed.

Like the other anticipatory jurisdictions, the project is still in the "create interest, raise money" phase and to do so, the Internet remains an ideal tool. And it helps those who are looking at such projects to see whether they are valid projects. Leaving aside Sealand (which does not want investment - it's the private domain of a single family) the similarity between the styles of the ship the lumps of concrete are notable.

First, they all say or imply that they cannot give details because of legal or regulatory reasons, they are about to sign agreements with governments or commercial giants (in the case of the ship, it is with the government of Honduras to take a lease of 140 acres of waterfront property "at Puerto Castilla" where the promoters say they "would like to say to the Government of Honduras and the people of Trujillo that we are committed to building our ships in the Bay of Trujillo."

So, having apparently travelled the world seeking the ideal place to build the ships (note the "s"), including Ulster, Ireland, UAE, New Zealand and Australia, they settled on Honduras because there is a deep water anchorage and a willing workforce who have no work following a hurricane, says the promoter. They also, of course, have no infrastructure for nor experience of building large sea-borne craft. It is, however, a commercial port, shipping mainly bananas.

Multiport Ship Agencies does not even give Puerto Castilla its own page, whilst the operator of ports in Honduras, Terminales de Cortés, S.A. de C.V., declares special expertise to be in bulk and general cargoes, technical expertise and facilities for ship operators.

MARI (the Middle American Research Institute of Tulane University, USA) has conducted many archaeological excavations in and around Puerto Castilla over a period of around 100 years. Their research demonstrates repeated finds of clay and stone products.

The Garifuna World Travel Guide says that Trujillo was found by Columbus in 1592 during his last visit to the Americas. It became an important port because it had one of the widest and deepest bays in Central America and became a haven for British pirates.

Honduras is on the East Coast of Central America, in the Caribbean. What is now Belize was until recently British Honduras.

Honduras is Spanish-speaking, and it gained independence from Spain on 15 Sept 1821. The currency is the lempira (a decimal currency so unusual that spell-checkers don't recognise it). There are currently around 22 lempira to the pound sterling. Situated in Middle America, bordering the Caribbean Sea, between Guatemala and Nicaragua and bordering the North Pacific Ocean, between El Salvador and Nicaragua, Honduras has a population of just over 5m in an area of approx. 111,890 sq. km.

Honduras.com says that Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere - yet in 1995 it had 111 airfields of one sort or another.

It is difficult to see how, with all the will in the world, Honduras can host such a project without huge capital investment - an investment that Norman Nixon, PE, CEO of Freedom Ship admits is not in place.

Nixon says that the Freedom Ship is "not a scam to take money from anyone"- and that "when investment is required, it will be raised through the proper legal channels." However, those who are interested can register to pay amounts up to USD3.3m for business or residential units - with deposits and agreements left with a Florida law firm.

Nixon says it has no intention of establishing its own legal system and expressly says that it will not be a "tax dodge," especially for US citizens who will not even be able to gain the tax-free exemption that they may be able to claim for living in a foreign country.

There is an international network of representatives - but most of them use anonymous e-mail services, or at least services that can be used by anyone without any checking on identification.

So, with a claimed market for four ships and a small version as a convention centre, Freedom Ship would seem to be aiming to corner the market.

But, Nexus has other ideas. Nexus wants to create a floating city in the South East Asia region - and then sail it around the world, to California, for example. It has a hoped-for population of 50,000 and an estimated construction cost of USD10 milliard.

To be built of concrete, fibre-glass and plastics, with maglev trains and surface and underwater transport for up to 100 people per vehicle with "jumbo" fan-jet aircraft, the primary aims of the community will be marine research. It sez here. 

The architect of Nexus is Eugene Tsui, who is, unlike most of those promoting anticipatory jurisdictions, an expert in a relevant field. He is currently working on the project to build a two-miles high tower in Taiwan, and has many successful projects to his name. He uses the environment to heat, cool and power his buildings. Some of his completed projects seem tailor-made to grace the cover of a Yes album. He is a mad inventor who thinks outside the envelope and has made some of his ideas work.

For this reason, Nexus may not be quite the oddball idea that it first seems. However, its website does, like other similar concepts, talk about sponsorship and names big name corporations as possible sponsors - and it is prudent to question whether they would approve of their names being used in this way.

The one thing that all of these anticipatory jurisdictions have in common is that they are self-sufficient, commanding all the good things and bad that result from isolation.

The one thing that strikes us is how much most of them look like the sort of project that sooner or later had to call in Thunderbirds. Maybe none of them should be created until someone forms a real-life International Rescue.