Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire… I know I’m far from alone in feeling a little thrill whenever those words come on the radio. To the uninitiated, the Shipping Forecast can seem a little bit eccentric. Most of us, after all, aren’t the sort of salty seadogs who need to know that it’s turning cyclonic in Malin soon. In fact, until you’ve cracked the code, the whole thing can sound like total gibberish.
But the loveliest thing I’ve learnt while writing a book celebrating the forecast’s 100th birthday on the radio is that countless people get every bit as misty-eyed about it as I do. The forecast travels clockwise round Britain, starting off the coast of Norway, sneaking down the North Sea and through the Channel. It then takes a little jaunt south to warmer climes, before rounding the west coast of Ireland and setting sail for colder waters off South-East Iceland.
For every one of the 31 forecast areas, you learn everything you could possibly want to know about wind speed and direction, about weather and visibility.
I do love its geekiness. I love how clever it is at squishing so much information into just a few hundred words, using language that’s incredibly rigid and yet strangely beautiful.
But its appeal is so much broader than that. The famous Romantic poet John Keats would have understood. He wished scientists (he called them philosophers) wouldn’t “unweave a rainbow”. Which was his way of saying that sometimes we want science to explain the whys and wherefores – but sometimes we want science to hush up and let us bask in awe and wonder.
And that’s something the Shipping Forecast lets us all do.
First, there are the enchanting area names, which take us on an adventure, a sort of maritime magical mystery tour, without us having to leave the comforts of home. We can close our eyes and imagine the fog swirling around Faroes, the waves crashing on Rockall, the sunset glowing red on Sole.
And then there’s the forecast’s very particular rhythm, which is so embedded in our psyche that lots of people say it feels like poetry – or even prayer. The words feel comforting and soothing, but also powerful and moving, all at the same time.
Maybe we think of prayer because, after all, in the Old Testament it was God, not the Met Office, who told Noah to batten down the hatches. In fact, throughout human history, the gods have often come down to issue gale warnings whenever we’ve been behaving badly. In 1703, when Britain was walloped by pretty much the worst storm in our recorded history, everyone still thought it was just another divine telling off.
The Victorians, though, decided not to leave everything in the lap of the gods. In 1859, a storm wrecked the Royal Charter, a steam clipper returning from Australia, on a jagged stretch of Welsh coast. Some 450 people drowned when the ship broke up.
The nation was horrified – but it was the sort of disaster that forced the authorities to take action.
A Royal Navy man called Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy led the way. He’d been a hotshot young lieutenant, captaining the Beagle which took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, but at the time of the shipwreck, his career was in the doldrums.
This was his chance. He hustled hard to head up a brand new government department, which has grown into what we now know today as the Met Office. His plan was simple. Thirteen ports around the coast of Britain and Ireland sent weather information via state-of-the-art electric telegraph with which he drew up detailed charts.
If they suggested a gale was in the offing, he zapped a revolutionary warning back to the coast by coffee time. Harbour masters then hoisted a special combination of drums and cones to alert seafarers about the imminent danger. It worked. Lives were saved and FitzRoy became a national celebrity. Queen Victoria even asked for a personal forecast when she wanted to make the crossing to her holiday home on the Isle of Wight.
But forecasting wasn’t an exact science, and FitzRoy didn’t always get it right. People took the mick, mocking him cruelly when he got it wrong. The government also started to grumble that it was all costing too much money. Eventually, his gale warnings were axed. Tragically, he died by suicide in 1865.
But after his death, it became clear how much seafarers had valued his work. His warnings returned, moving to the radio in January 1924 and arriving on the BBC a year later in October 1925. Fittingly, in 2002, FitzRoy was honoured with his own forecast area – even if it upset some people that the popular name Finisterre was replaced.
Over the last century, the Shipping Forecast has become part of the fabric of our lives – part of our national story. It featured in the opening ceremony at the 2012 London Olympics alongside a host of other British superstars, from the NHS to 007. It’s also inspired some of our greatest poets and songwriters. My personal favourite is probably that Britpop classic, This Is A Low, the penultimate track on Blur’s multi-million selling 1994 album, Parklife. Singer Damon Albarn got the idea from seeing the iconic forecast area map on a handkerchief gifted to him by bassist Alex James.
In fact, the Shipping Forecast can make poets of us all.
Not long ago, Radio 4 invited listeners to send in snippets about their daily lives, written in that instantly recognisable style. They had an amazing response and the poet Murray Lachlan Young pulled it all together to create The People’s Shipping Forecast. The contributions are all brilliant, riffing on everything from toddlers to tax returns. There was even a great joke for Radio 4 fans: “Archers, Rob, Sinisterre, Helen, visibility rising slowly.”
What I’ve learned, though, from talking to people is that we all have our own personal connection to the Shipping Forecast. I first heard it as a child, when our family used to go sailing on a friend’s wooden boat. The biggest possible sin was to talk – even to breathe, my brother and I used to joke – when the Shipping Forecast was on.
In those days, of course, if you missed it there was no checking back on your phone. You had to wait another six hours until it came on the radio again. When I was an adventurous 20-something, I did a lot of sailing, and the forecast became a reliable friend, telling me when it was safe to put to sea – and when it was best to pay out a bit more anchor chain and cosy up in the pub.
Later still, when I was working in London, I loved catching the late-night forecast because it allowed me to fall asleep dreaming of all the excitement and adventure that were in pretty short supply in my office job.
And when I had children, that same 00.48 forecast marked the start of those long night-watches looking after a tiny baby. The small hours could feel pretty hard and lonely, but they were also precious and magical. And you knew a new day (hopefully featuring a husband bearing a cup of tea…) was about to dawn when the 05.20 forecast finally arrived.
Since writing the book, I’ve also been lucky enough to talk to some of the people at Radio 4 who read us the Shipping Forecast. It was touching to hear how much it means to them as well.
Come the late-night forecast, they’re all alone on their floor in Broadcasting House.
The automatic office lights have all winked out. It’s just them talking to us by their one little light, like a national bedtime story.
The Shipping Forecast sums up some of the best things about Britain: our passion for public service, our quirky creativity andour sense of adventure. Here’s to the next 100 years!
The Shipping Forecast by Meg Clothier (Ebury, £16.99) is out now. Visit expressbookshop.com or call Express Bookshop on 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25
