The Shipping Forecast

I have just been reading a book on that strangest of all BBC Radio phenomenon - something that warms the heart of many a Brit of my generation – The Shipping Forecast. For the benefit of the American readers, the Shipping Forecast is a weather forecast for mariners that is broadcast four times a day on BBC radio (you can get it on the internet now too). While it’s intended audience was sea farers around the British Isles, it has become something much more than that and it is now equally important to many of us that have no connection with the sea at all - important not for its weather predictive capabilities, but for its comforting reassurance that all is still well in the United Kingdom (even though the weather may be foul).

The Shipping Forecast has been broadcast on the BBC since the 1930’s and it continues today even though a ship at sea must now have far better weather forecasting technology available to it. It is something I grew up with as did many of my generation and while I don’t really pay attention to the content, the words area almost poetic – “Thames, Dover, Wight – south westerly veering north westerly five or six, decreasing four. Rain then showers. Moderate with fog patches, becoming good”.

The book "Attention All Shipping" by Charlie Connolly is mainly a travelogue of the authors travels around the various sea areas in the Shipping Forecast, and I don’t know if I could recommend it, so to save you the trouble of reading it here is all you might ever need to know about the Shipping Forecast.

• It is produced by the Meteorological Office from a building in land-locked Bracknell of all places.

• The Met Office was created by Captain Fitzroy, who was the Captain of the Beagle for Darwin’s journey to the Galapagos (guess who else was on board – a scientist named Beaufort – the originator of the Beaufort Wind Scale).

• Fitzroy pioneered many of the early weather prediction methods and first coined the term “Weather Forecast”.

• The Forecast is a carefully crafted piece from 350 to 370 words long, read very precisely to fit into the allotted time slot on the radio.

• It is broadcast four times a day on Radio Four (00:48, 05:35, 12:01, 17:54) (it used to be on the Light Programme when I was a kid).

• There were originally 13 sea areas but now we have a total of 31 - check out the map.

• The forecast describes each area or group of areas in three sections – winds; weather; and visibility. For example, "Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger South veering southwest 4 or 5. Rain or showers. Moderate or good."

There was apparently much uproar in the UK when in 2002 the old sea area of Finisterre (off the north west coast of Portugal) was renamed Fitzroy in recognition of Captain Fitzroy’s contributions. People apparently got quite passionate about disrupting this age old tradition.

These days I take great comfort in hearing the Shipping Forecast on Radio Four over the Internet whilst I am comfortably tucked away in my house in California. I particularly like the 00:48 GMT broadcast where it is preceded with the music Sailing By (written by the British Composer and fellow Derbyshire resident Ronald Binge – what a name, and what absolutely awful light music).