Charts were broadcast during the early months of Radio Caroline before the station merged with Radio Atlanta, although little information is available.

On the date of the merger, Saturday July 4th, the Top 50 came from the MV Caroline (formerly Fredericia) while she was still anchored off the Essex coast, before setting sailing to become Caroline North. On that date, the Top 50 was broadcast from both ships simultaneously, between 4.00pm and 6.00 pm, but with different hosts. On Caroline North, under sail to the Isle of Man, the show was hosted by Tom Lodge. On Caroline South, it was hosted by Tony Withers, "your man with the music", who later became famous as Tony Windsor on Radio London.

The early charts were taken from 'Melody Maker', one of the most popular music newspapers of the Sixties era. The Melody Maker chart was slightly altered, probably to avoid copyright problems. It is quite difficult to establish exactly what was broadcast, as it is not clear if this first chart after the merger was identical on both ships.

Jon Myer of the Pirate Radio Hall of Fame did establish in an email exchange with the late Tom Lodge, that for at least part of Caroline's history, separate charts were compiled for the North and South stations. Tom told Jon, "The two ships were always separate. I created the charts on whichever ship I was on, mostly from Melody Maker. We made some subtle changes, but not much, mostly from information we would receive from sales and also feedback from the audience. But that was extremely minimal. Melody Maker was our main source. What was happening, chart-wise, on the ship I was not on, I have no idea."

Jon says, "I am under the impression that when Phil Solomon took charge of Caroline (and Tom had left) a lot of the control was centralised and the charts were compiled in Caroline House. From then until August 1967 both Caroline ships used the same Countdown."

Hans Zegfeld, of Nijmegen, The Netherlands, who kindly contributed many of these 1964 charts, said: "As a fourteen-year-old, I started spending every Saturday afternoon writing down the chart from Radio Caroline every week until July 22nd 1967. I noted them on grey pieces of paper and I send you some scans of my earliest ones from July 1964. Don't pay attention to the English, as I had just started to learn the language at school. The spelling is sometimes phonetic and therefore quite hilarious! It was a problem for me not being able to throw away old things, but years can turn that into luck for lots of persons. For you, the possibility to full up some gaps in the statistics!"

One of Hans's handwritten charts is on the left, but we have turned the colour of the paper to white to make it easier to read. We think, for someone who was only just learning English, young Hans made a brilliant job of identifying these tracks.

Only the Top 30 positions have been noted for some of the earliest charts. As it is unclear whether or not a full Top 50 countdown was broadcast, charts containing a full 30 tracks have still been marked as incomplete.

Contibutor Frank van Heerde, from Purmerend in the Netherlands wrote in 2012: "Some 10 years ago I guess it was, Machteld Meijer* sent me some information about records that made the Caroline charts in the autumn of 1964. After that, it was a big study for me to put the listed records in the right order to fill the charts.

The results were various. In some cases, I succeeded in finding the complete Top 50, in others, I did not. Some of the titles I had been given were wrong. For example 'I Can't Answer'. The right title must be 'Questions I Can't Answer' by Heinz (Burt).

In 1964, Caroline (South) was my favourite station. In 1965 Big L took over and in 1966 for half a year, it was Swinging Radio England. After SRE closed down, I switched between London, Caroline and for some months Radio 227. After the MOA became law, I listened to Caroline International till the end."

We thank Frank for his valuable (and hard!) work. If anyone can fill in the gaps, or resolve situations where we have two singles sharing a place (usually noted at the bottom of the chart) please get in touch.

* Machteld was also a contributor to the early Radio London Fab Forties.