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Several people were said to have paid deposits that were supposedly kept in an escrow fund, held in trust by lawyers. The scheme hit a “bump in the road”, according to Nixon’s latest message on the firm’s website, posted in July. The group’s unnamed president apparently “turned over our entire bank account \[which, Nixon says, contained $400,000<NO>\] to a man who promised him a Peruvian gold certificate”. Construction is yet to begin.

The most realistic proposition for eager long-term sea dwellers is to clamber aboard the World (www.aboardtheworld.com), a cruise ship owned by its residents. The ship has 165 “living units” and has circumnavigated the globe continuously since 2003, with short stops, living large under the flag of the Bahamas.

Perhaps the best-known micro-nation is the “principality of Sealand”, built on the remains of a second world war sea fort, six miles off the Suffolk coast (see panel below right).

While Sealand has been inhabited by a motley collection of refuseniks, Friedman reveals some unexpected pragmatism. “Initially a good place to go is 12 miles off a major city such as Los Angeles. This gets you into international waters like a ship but lets you operate businesses that draw from that economy. We’re looking at medical tourism — people already fly to Costa Rica and Thailand. Why not fly 12 nautical miles from LA instead?”

Leaving aside the earthquake risks inherent to the Californian coast, the creation of a floating facility where movie stars can drop in for a facelift too radical for the scrupulous plastic surgeons of Beverly Hills seems a far cry from building an offshore utopia.

Not everyone buys the idea. “The idea that we can take humanity, scoop it up and place it on an artificial island that would be self-sustaining is deeply unrealistic,” says Ben Stewart of Greenpeace. “Perhaps it would be possible for a small elite proportion of humanity but the coming century isn’t going to look like an HG Wells novel where we all move to another planet or to the ocean.”

And will Friedman be part of this crew of intellectual elites roughing it aboard ClubStead? “Unfortunately not,” he says with a smile. “I have got married and had a kid. I don’t think it will be suitable for family life for a while, but my wife is willing to go and live there once it is big enough to be civilised and interesting.”

Friedman will be talking about Seasteading and the Future of Freedom at the Adam Smith Institute, central London, on March 31

In a world of their own

Principality of Sealand
From a second world war-era sea fort six miles off the coast of Suffolk, HRH Prince Roy of Sealand once issued stamps, coins and passports, and entered competitors in mini-golf championships. His Highness, aka Paddy Roy Bates, first decamped to HM Fort Roughs, pictured below, in 1967 to set up a pirate radio station. He named it Sealand and declared it an independent sovereign state. Bates has since retired to Spain, but his son Michael continues to lay claim to the bare concrete platform, installing caretakers in residence.

Grand Duchy of Avram
The Australian John Charlton Rudge established Avram in George Town, Tasmania, in the early 1980s. He issued his own currency and set up his own bank — or “b_nk”, in an effort to sidestep financial regulations. The Australian government spent A$22m (about £10m at today’s rates) in legal fees in an attempt to close his unlicensed enterprise, with no success. The publicity helped Rudge win election to the Tasmanian parliament.

Free State Bottleneck
A mapping error by the allies as they occupied Germany after the first world war left an 18½-mile gap in the shape of a bottleneck between two zones. The 8,000 people affected declared themselves a microstate in 1919, elected a president, and issued stamps and currency. Bottleneck was dissolved when the French expanded their zone in 1923 after Germany’s failure to pay reparations for the war.

Other World Kingdom
In 1997 a chateau near Cerna in the Czech Republic declared itself an independent “bondage holiday” resort, dedicated to female domination. Ruled by Queen Patricia I, it boasts a swimming pool, stables . . . and a torture chamber and prison, complete with cells for rent.

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