Dogger, Fisher, German Bight: shipping forecast celebrates 150 years

Consternation, mourning and national soul-searching greeted the temporary silencing of Big Ben last week, but at least another favourite fixture of the nightly and early morning radio is to continue. The hymnal cadences of Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, through Shannon, Rockall, Malin all the way to south-east Iceland, will be heard as usual on Thursday, as the shipping forecast celebrates 150 years of uninterrupted service.

The shipping forecast, the longest continuous weather forecast ever made, has been a public service since 1867 when it was used to warn of storms. The warnings were first issued using the electric telegraph until radio became available. Storm warnings were sent over the telegraph wires to harbours, where signals were hoisted to warn ships at sea.

When the BBC was formed in the 1920s, the maritime forecast became a fixture of the daily wireless programme where it would remain with occasional modifications and a break during the war when the broadcast was discontinued for fear it would help the enemy. The forecast was still made, however, and disseminated to the Royal Navy.

Though today’s seafarers have access to many more sources of meteorological data, and many radio listeners famously use the late-night incantatory broadcast – never more than 380 words, and always following the same strict format – for soporific rather than navigational purposes, the broadcasts still fulfil a vital safety role.

Peter Dawes, lifesaving services manager at the RNLI, said: “[It] is an excellent source of information, and a vital tool in helping people make critical safety decisions at the coast and at sea. We urge everyone to check the weather before heading to the coast, in order to stay safe.”

A century and a half ago, the shipping forecast was the most practical application of the techniques of weather forecasting pioneered by Robert FitzRoy, vice-admiral and founder of the Met Office, a few years earlier.

A disastrous storm off the coast of North Wales, in 1859, in which the Royal Charter steam clipper foundered along with more than 130 other ships, with the loss of 800 lives, led the naval scientist to start publishing a tentative series of weather forecasts from 1861.

FitzRoy, the captain of HMS Beagle, on which Charles Darwin made the voyages that led to his theory of evolution, was one of the fathers of modern weather forecasting, rightly foreseeing that new technology, including improved communications and observations, would render accurate predictions of the weather possible. But he was ridiculed for years for his efforts, and his petitions to the Board of Trade for public support went unanswered. Discouraged by the response, and having exhausted his fortune in attempting to set up a regular forecasting service, he killed himself in 1865.

After his death, the regular forecasts he initiated ceased, but public outcry led to their reinstatement in 1867 as a safety tool for mariners, and they have continued with occasional modifications ever since.

FitzRoy is now commemorated in every shipping forecast as a sea area was named after him in 2002. This caused its own consternation on introduction, nearly on a par with that currently surrounding Big Ben, because FitzRoy replaced the long-standing and sonorous Finisterre, an area of sea close to similarly named areas of the French and Spanish maritime areas.

The shipping forecast is now 93% accurate overall, and the forecast for inshore waters is about 97% accurate. Wind direction is not always as easy to get right as wind speed, with about 80% accuracy and more than 90% respectively, while about 15% of gale warnings turn out to be false alarms.