The Sea is a Medium: A Few Words on the Shipping Forecast

By modern standards, the shipping forecast should not exist. In a world where satellites and radar can measure the precise movement of ships, planes, and weather patterns, there is little need to tune into the radio four times a day to learn about the wind speed or visibility in 'Wight' or 'Cromarty.' In fact, a simple glance at a weather app on a mobile phone can tell someone so much more about the actual conditions out on the sea than a few random-seeming words strung together on BBC Radio 4 that it's almost laughable. But yet, the Shipping Forecast, despite all odds, endures. The question is why. Why has the shipping forecast not faded away into history, just another relic of a bygone era of radio? Why, even today, when it serves little functional purpose, does the Shipping Forecast continue to dominate the airwaves of Radio 4 four times a day?

The answer is that listening to the Shipping Forecast is, at its most primal level, not about listening to the shipping forecast. Although the reasons vary (and we'll get to that), the true explanation of why the shipping forecast has stood the test of time and very likely will continue to do so lies solely on the emotional effects it has on the human psyche.

First of all, however, let's establish just what exactly the Shipping Forecast actually is, as a solid understanding of it is vital moving forward. In 1859, disastrous and dangerous storms off the coast of Wales that cost more than 800 lives led vice-admiral, naval scientist, and captain Robert Fitzroy to pioneer a series of tentative weather forecasts two years later in 1861. The idea was visionary — but unfortunately most of the world didn't see it that way, and Fitzroy died several years later after exhausting his fortune trying to get his idea off the ground. The concept of a weather forecast didn't die, however — due to public demands, the forecasts became a permanent fixture in 1867 as a safety tool for those at sea. At first, storm warnings were transmitted by telegraph to harbors, where naval flags would be raised to warn ships about oncoming weather conditions. By the time of the invention of radio in the early 20th century, the shipping forecast was already a mainstay in naval culture, but it was the broadcasting of the forecast over the airwaves that truly cemented it in British popular imagination.

On the surface, the shipping forecast sounds like a bunch of random words mashed together into one long jumbled mess of nonsense. But in actuality the forecast is specifically designed to give an incredible amount of information in the least amount of time possible. For example, take a look at this forecast:

"Trafalgar, Northwesterly 5 or 6 at first in southeast, otherwise variable 3 or 4, becoming southwesterly 5 to 7 in northwest. Rough or very rough, occasionally moderate in far southeast. Occasional rain. Good, occasionally poor."

If you don't know what you're looking for, all of this seems pretty meaningless. But if you understand the pattern that the forecast follows for each location, then you can begin to make sense of it. There are five main things that together make up the forecasts: Location, Wind, Sea State, Weather, and Visibility. Let's decipher it — first of all, there's the location. In this case, it's "Trafalgar." The shipping forecast covers 31 areas of sea around the UK, and each has its own distinctive name to identify it. Some are named after towns, some after rivers, some after people, it varies. Next is the wind: what direction it's coming from and how fast it is in knots. After that is the sea state — basically, how rough or calm the water is. Next is weather, which is pretty self-explanatory, followed by visibility, also pretty self-explanatory. Once you know what you're looking for, the forecast starts to make sense — and you can see why this is such important information for sailors, fishermen, and other people heading out on the ocean to know.

Even so, in this day and age even sailors are unlikely to wait around to hear this information four times a day on the radio when the very same information is available online on the BBC's website, and dozens of weather reporting websites can give them much more information than can be gleaned from this little blurb. So the question remains — why does the shipping forecast endure, if not to tell sailors about the state of the seas?

The truth is that the main reason behind the endurance of the Shipping Forecast lies in its effect on the human mind; the careful, melodic incantation of words that soothes the soul and calms the mind. For most listeners, tuning in to the Shipping Forecast every night is how they fall asleep. It's undeniable that there is something magical about the way the forecast sounds to the ear. It's poetic, in a way. It also helps that the first shipping forecast of the day is at 12:48am — right as some people are finally drifting off to sleep. For some, listening to the shipping forecast is a sort of bedtime story, and in many ways, it's the perfect one. The words are mostly meaningless to laymen, so there's no pressure to stay awake to keep listening. For others, the shipping forecast can serve as a sort of white noise, in the same way the sound of a stream or a thunderstorm can.

The shipping forecast is also known to have an ASMR effect on some people, just like some of those other "calming" noises. ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response and is described as "the experience of tingling sensations in the crown of the head, in response to a range of audio-visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, and hand movements." A quick search on YouTube turns up thousands of results with "ASMR" in the title, some with millions of views, proving just how popular and in demand this type of content is. However, in a lot of ways, the shipping forecast was the original ASMR video. In a time before television and the internet, people could still tune in to the radio and hear these calming sounds every night. The ASMR trend has led to a massive resurgence of interest in the shipping forecast, causing a lot of younger people who may have discovered it through an ASMR video to listen in to the actual broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

However, in another way, the enduring nature of the shipping forecast can also be attributed to the sea itself. The United Kingdom — England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland — is first and foremost an island nation. The sea is in its blood and it calls to people. It always has. Britain ruled the world by conquering the waves, and it has never truly forgotten. In the past, the sea represented a source of life; you could fish upon the waves and thus bring home food to feed your family. The sea also represented power, particularly the power of the British Empire. It was through the trading ships that England received goods from all over the globe, and through the might of the British navy that the Empire was able to defend itself from the rest of the world and assert its dominance in new lands. When one is standing at the shoreline there is the sense that the whole world is connected, and anywhere can be reached by taking to the open sea. It was said that once upon a time, the sun never set upon the British Empire. The sun never set on the seas, either — and once upon a time, the British Empire and the seas were the same thing.

Even in a world where it's relatively easy to hop on a plane and several hours later find yourself on the other side of the world, people haven't truly forgotten the legacy of the sea, especially in the UK. They are still as enamoured with it as they have been for centuries. They still write poems and stories about it, just like Keats and Coleridge and Dickinson. The shipping forecast is part of this: it is in itself one long, ongoing ode to the sea, with new chapters being added each new day. Read at a steady pace, at just the right time of night, the Shipping Forecast is a form of magic — it transports the mind off to these mystical, faraway sounding places — Viking, Dogger, Faeroes, Hebrides, Cromarty, Tyne, Humber — and reminds the nation of what it was once like to rule the seas.

That is what the Shipping Forecast today truly is. It's about the soft hum of the radio after you've had a hot cup of tea and you're tucked under a blanket in the wee hours of the morning, savoring that liminal space between one day and the next. The shipping forecast is about the mysticism of the ocean, the fond memories of a family holiday to the seaside. It's about the calm voice of a friend carrying you off to sleep with thoughts of far away places. It mirrors the feeling you get when standing on the beach, waves crashing in front of you as the sea spray mists your face, the ocean opening out in front of you in an overwhelming expanse; the feeling that if you cast out upon the waves you could end up anywhere. It's about the feeling of being somewhere and wanting to be anywhere else.

In essence, the endurance of the shipping forecast is not something you can truly explain only with facts. Sure, you can cite memories of imperialism or ASMR trends or even good old stubborn British tradition, but to truly understand why the Shipping Forecast still exists you can't just rely on research. You have to understand how the Shipping Forecast makes you feel. And then you have to recognize that for millions of people, that feeling is so powerful that every day, year after year, decade after decade, the British people have turned on their radios and listened in because of it. The way the Shipping Forecast calms the mind and soothes the soul is why it continues to exist, despite not having much real practical purpose anymore. It is about a sense of comfort and connection in a world that often doesn't make much sense, or, if you aren't feeling very poetic, it's about listening to a man read out the weather forecast at midnight just because you can.