Radio 4’s archive on Saturday night gave us a beautifully put together history of the shipping forecast, that hypnotic incantation which plays such a surprisingly important role in many people’s lives, even though they may never have even been on the sea themselves.
We learned about how the forecast is put together in the age of supercomputers; something of the history; what it means to seafarers past & present & to poets; an actor’s view of what reading it aloud involves, & the precision of meaning in every word – even ‘Perhaps’ & that reassuring ‘Good’ which often ends the otherwise scary forecast for an area. All interspersed with fragments of recordings of the different voices which have presented it over the years.
The programme was actually a year late – one might have expected it to have been broadcast last February to mark the 150th anniversary of the first ever statistical, scientific storm warning service in 1861.
As with many well-loved programmes the shipping forecast has not been without controversy over the years – changes can be deeply, even passionately resented. One of the most recent came when the name of one of the Shipping Areas – those geometrical blocks into which the seas around these British Isles are divided – was changed. These have a rhythm, poetry & mystery of their own: South Utsire, North Utsire …
So why replace the soothing three syllables of Finistere with the peremptory two of Fitzroy? Outrage followed.
The outrage was misplaced for this represented a belated recognition & honouring of the name of Admiral Robert Fitzroy, he who was previously known to most people only as the captain who played a supporting role in the life & fame of Charles Darwin & his voyage on The Beagle.
In 1854 Fitzroy settled on dry land to become chief statistician at the newly established Met office. With the aid of three clerks he began the tedious business of collating weather information from thousands of ship’s logs (did they have the aid of calculating machines?) In February 1861 the storm warning service began alerting, by telegraph, coastal stations which then hoisted cones & banners to give the message to passing ships; the number of lives lost at sea fell by a third.
In August of that year The Times became the first newspaper to publish a daily forecast of what sort of weather its land-based readers could expect; Queen Victoria never travelled between her homes in Windsor Castle & Osborne House on the Isle of Wight without checking first with Fitzroy that the crossing of the Solent would not be too hazardous or uncomfortable.
Statisticians should honour the name of Fitzroy, not least for his statement, published in The Times, that “’Forecasts’ are expressions of probabilities - & not dogmatic predictions.”
