The BBC Shipping Forecast turns 100!

This week's guest is an old dear friend Carolyn Brown who I have had the pleasure of sailing with many time in the past. But Carolyn also read the well known  shipping forecast on BBC Radio 4. Listen as we hear about this very British of institutions which is popular with more than just boaters.

The BBC Shipping Forecast is a daily broadcast that provides weather updates and sea conditions for shipping routes around the UK and surrounding areas. It includes information on wind direction, strength, visibility, and sea state for specific maritime zones, helping sailors and fishermen navigate safely. The forecast has become a beloved part of British culture, known for its distinctive, poetic delivery and its crucial role in maritime safety. It is aired on BBC Radio 4, typically four times a day, and is also available online.

Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00)
you

Speaker 2 (00:09)
Welcome to Boat Talk Rodeo, the show where we dive into all things boating from the latest innovations to the stories that make life on the water so special. I'm your host, Mark Cork, and today we have a very special guest.

An old friend of mine, Carolyn Brown. Carolyn spent 25 years at the BBC as a continuity announcer and a presenter of the legendary Shipping Forecast, which believe it or not is celebrating 100 years on the air in 2025. Beyond her impressive broadcasting career, Carolyn is also a skilled yachtswoman and we have had the pleasure of sailing together with the BBC Yacht Club over the years. Today we'll be diving into the magic of the Shipping Forecast, what it is, why it's important to mariners and how

it has stood the test of time. Plus we'll get some first-hand sailing stories from Carolyn including some of her most thrilling moments at sea and if she's willing we'll touch on a deeply personal matter of her life her incredible active love in donating her kidney to her late husband. Carolyn welcome to Boat Talk Radio it's so good to have you here.

Speaker 1 (01:13)
really thrilled, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:14)
Well,

you're welcome. It was great to talk to you again. And I just got some questions about the shipping forecast. And for those unfamiliar, what exactly is the shipping forecast and why is it so important to mariners?

Speaker 1 (01:29)
Well, the shipping forecast is a broadcast that goes out four times a day on the British station Radio 4, which is the main speech station in the UK. It goes out just before one o'clock in the morning. It goes out again just before six o'clock in the morning. And it goes a shorter version, like a three-minute summary version goes out

twice a day in the middle of the day as well. It's of interest, deep interest, obviously to anybody going to sea and people who live by the sea, of which there are a lot because we're an island nation. But also it's one of those things that's just become kind of woven into the fabric of British life. Because if you listen to the radio, the chances are you're gonna...

part of a shipping forecast at some point during the day. And people have been listening to this for years and years, you know, all their lives. They can remember listening to it when they were, you know, knee high. And it's one of those lovely things that creates a continuity through your life. And people who don't necessarily understand the code that it's written in, which is what mariners can tune into and understand, for other people, they just say that to them, it's like a sort of comforting mantra that's part of their day.

Speaker 2 (02:55)
Right. You mentioned on the specific format and that's very interesting. I remember when I first started listening to the shipping forecast, it sounded like double Dutch. But can you break down what the different elements mean and how sailors interpret them? There's no extraneous words in there or anything. Every word has a purpose, correct?

Speaker 1 (03:12)
you

Yes, the forecast begins with a warning of gales. So if there's a gale likely to happen or a severe gale anywhere around the British Isles, the first thing will be there are warnings of gales in sea areas, Malin, Hebrides, and Bailey, for example. And then they will go on to the general synopsis. So the general synopsis will

give you information about where the high pressures are, if low pressure is moving in, and what the pressure in millibars is of those weather systems. And then it breaks it down into the 31 different sea areas. Often those are clumped together because obviously the weather is similar around the coast of the British Isles. So you might get two or three sea areas together. And then you would get information, first of all, the wind direction and speed. So it would say north.

Northwesterly, 6 to Gale 8, increasing severe Gale 9 later maybe. Then it will tell you what the weather's doing, whether it's squally showers or whether it's good. Occasionally there's light icing maybe, which sounds like a fairy cake, but you know what they mean. Then there's the visibility, which is usually either good or moderate, poor.

and you could, you know, sometimes very poor. And then you have to sound, you have to sort of give it an intonation. You know, it's a weird thing when you're reading it, you don't want to say the visibility is good. You want to say the visibility is good. And then you will say the visibility is very poor. So people always laugh about how it's delivered because you, you're sort of telling people with your tone of voice, whether it's going to get better or whether they're in for hell on earth.

Speaker 2 (05:12)
I understand you've got one right in front of you. Can you just read just a little bit?

Speaker 1 (05:16)
So come out something like, and now the shipping forecast issued by the meteorological office at 1200 GMT today, Monday, the 10th of February. General synopsis at 0600. New lows expected Thames, 1014 and just west of Fitzroy, 1000 by 0600 Tuesday.

Viking, wind, northeasterly three to five backing easterly or southeasterly four to six, slight or moderate, occasionally rough later, fair, good. North at Syrah, northeasterly three to five backing easterly or southeasterly four to six, slight or moderate, fair, good. So to explain that to somebody who doesn't know what they're hearing really, in north at Syrah,

It means that the wind is going to be northeasterly three to five.

Speaker 2 (06:16)
That's both thoughts, Gael.

Speaker 1 (06:19)
on

the Beaufort scale. So backing easterly or southeasterly four to six. Six is what you would call a small ship gale. Gale force wind is force eight. But if you're in a small yacht, know, 20, 20 meter yacht, you're going to think twice about going out in the six for sure. The next bit, slight or moderate, that's the sea state. So that's telling you how high the waves are likely to be.

then the word fair relates to the weather. So that means that the visibility is fairly good. Obviously, it's good visibility or fair visibility or poor visibility. that, yes, so the final word is what visibility you can expect given the weather. And so there's such a lot of information in that that a sailor can unpack. When I first started doing the

shipping forecast which was back in the last century when people didn't have access to the forecast from you many other different directions a lot of small ship sailors couldn't afford technology didn't have the technology and a lot of the technology that we have now didn't even exist. shipping forecast was a bit longer there was another two minutes which was also the weather reports from coastal stations and these were

stations scattered around the coast of the UK and they would tell you what the barometric pressure was at each of those stations so that if you sat down with a sketch map of the British Isles, and we used to have to do this when we were getting our skipper certificates or the yacht master certificates.

Speaker 2 (08:05)
I remember doing this with you when the cold many are cold and wet night actually

Speaker 1 (08:10)
Yes, sitting in a sitting in a cold cockpit with a pencil. Yes, drawing in the ISO bars like you would see on a television weather forecast to yes, to figure out where these weather fronts were moving to, how strong the wind was going to be, whether it was going to back or via or yeah. But I also remember that when I started reading the shipping forecast, which is many years after I'd, you know, been a dedicated user of the shipping forecast, but.

When I started reading it, I remember you telling me that I should have somebody throwing buckets of water over me in the studio while I read it. Because you knew that I was sitting there in a lovely warm studio with a cup of tea if you were out sailing. you thought I would read it with more empathy if I was feeling your pain.

Speaker 2 (08:57)
Yeah, exactly. mean, one of the things that we, one of the things that is synonymous with the shipping forecast is the theme music, it's its own theme music called Sailing By.

I know that once or twice, I've been, it was, the shipping forecast used to be just after half past midnight, if you remember. I remember staying up specifically to listen to the shipping forecast. Then they play this soothing music and I fell asleep before the forecast came on.

Speaker 1 (09:56)
I know, it's a beautiful thing, it's a beautiful piece of music and they play it specifically so that people who are trying to tune in old-fashioned radios and are tuning around the dial trying to find radio 4 will hear this music and know that they're listening to the right station. That was the the origin of playing it but yes they should be playing something more martial and uplifting with a few more trumpets and drums in it and that might wake you up.

Speaker 2 (10:25)
Yeah, but it's deep. But yeah, just going back to what you were saying about splashing you with water in the studio, you know, you can be all hell breaking loose and then you've got this nice soothing bit of music which doesn't seem to fit the sea state at the time.

Speaker 1 (10:40)
No, I can imagine, yeah. But you see, I, the other thing that happened was that when I started reading the forecast as part of my job, I had this secret telephone number that could ring the radio for a continuity suite where the forecast originated and I knew all the announcers. So I could always go to.

Speaker 2 (10:43)
Anyway, I

Speaker 1 (11:05)
bed earlier because I could phone up I knew they'd get the forecast at about midnight for the late night one I could ring up and say can you just give me the lowdown on what's happening in Thames and why because you know quite like to know this and then go to bed please so I used to have a handy shortcut though that made me very popular crew person

Speaker 2 (11:29)
Yeah, yeah, it's a shame that you weren't reading that when we were sailing together all those years ago.

Speaker 1 (11:34)
Yes,

yeah, no, we didn't have that. We didn't have that facility then that we had to set the alarm clock. yes, and set the alarm clock for very early in the morning to get the early one off.

Speaker 2 (11:44)
exactly right yeah so I mean obviously it's a hundred years old so you know you were doing it for 25 years so I hate to say that but that's a quarter of that time

Speaker 1 (11:56)
sure it is, yes. I really haven't thought about it that way.

Speaker 2 (12:01)
Sorry, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. not just in your time, but ever since this started in 1925, has the forecast changed much over the years? mean, the way the forecast is presented, is it much different?

Speaker 1 (12:20)
No, a couple of the sea areas have changed. I think when I started doing it in 1990 something, everybody was very confused about where North and South Utsira were because they were relative newcomers in the forecast. They're off the coast of Norway. yet years after North and South Utsira appeared in the forecast, people would come up to me. As soon as I said I read the shipping forecast, they would say, where is North Utsira?

and sort of took it as a personal affront. And the other change that happened was that we used to have a sea area off the coast of Spain called Finisterre. But that became a bit controversial because the Spanish in their shipping bulletins also had a sea area called Finisterre, which didn't quite match. So it was named, Finisterre was renamed for us Fitzroy after Admiral Robert Fitzroy, who was the

the captain who took Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands, famously. But Fitzroy was the person who created the British Meteorological Office. There was a really bad storm off the south coast of England in which many, many boats were lost. And he went to the then King, I can't remember which one it is, I'm sorry, and said, look, we've now got a system of telegraph offices around the UK.

I think we can put together information and warn mariners of when there might be bad weather coming their way. And this was quite a novelty and a new idea when he came up with it. Sadly, I don't think he lived to see his dream actually become true, but he was basically the father of the meteorological office in the UK.

From my point of view, working and actually reading the shipping forecast, the technology of it was the thing which changed enormously for me. When I first started reading it, which is, as say, back in the 1990s, the forecast was delivered to us on Telex machines, which used to have this roll of very thin, noisy paper and a little sort of golf ball typing out the letters one at a time.

Because this machine was so noisy, we couldn't have it in the studio with us. It had to be in the cubicle next door where the studio manager would sit. And we would have to go out and sort of tear these sheets of paper off the machine. And then because it was such fragile, crinkly paper, we had to actually paste or stick it onto sheets of cardboard. had to...

grotty old sheets of cardboard in the studio and we would paper clip these sheets of paper onto the cardboard because if you didn't the paper made such a lot of noise that you often drowned out what you were trying to tell people with it. After that we then had fax machines, don't whether you remember those wonderful things, that came out on A4 paper which was better and much easier to read but very often

Speaker 2 (15:27)
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:42)
During the night, the machine would run out of paper or there would be a paper jam and the whole machine would just stop. And there was one famous morning where I went in to read the news early in the morning and discovered that the fax machine was turned up, I couldn't turn the fax machine back on and I only had a page and a half of the shipping forecast. And it ran to about six pages. So I rang up the Met Office and said, please could they resend it?

could they resend it to another fax machine that was three doors down the corridor. And while I started to read the shipping forecast very slowly, the studio manager had to go running up and down the corridor, bringing me the sheets of paper one at a time so that I could read the whole forecast.

Speaker 2 (16:25)
That's fine, I'm sure that you've got plenty of other tales like that as well. We're talking about sea areas, now this is going to sound maybe a bit of a weird question. Do you have a favourite sea area?

Speaker 1 (16:40)
I do, yes. My favorite sea area would be southeast Iceland, I think. It just sounds so cold and unforgiving, and it's close to the end of the shipping bulletin, so for me it meant that I'd made it, and I probably wasn't going to crash the time signal at the end of the bulletin.

because timing is a big issue when you're reading the shipping forecast as well. But no, I just love the sound of Southeast Iceland. And in fact, I sailed there last summer. I went up to Iceland from the North Coast of the UK and actually sailed through it. So that felt like a great achievement. Yes.

Speaker 2 (17:27)
Homecoming of sorts even.

Yeah, I mean the other thing about the shipping forecast, we briefly talked about people that aren't sailors or don't rely on the shipping forecast but even amongst the general public in the UK, it's got a bit of a cult following hasn't it?

Speaker 1 (17:47)
Oh it has, I mean to be honest these days there aren't that many sailors who would rely upon the Radio 4 shipping forecast. Again when I first started I was quite a vocal advocate for it because some managers at Radio 4 are forever saying well we're worried it'll make people turn off, know people might get bored and go and tune into a different radio station so there were always reasons for not doing it.

And I used to passionately say, there are people out there who need this information, who don't have big technology and who can't get it any other way. Now, that isn't necessarily true. People can get it from the Coast Guard, who do regular broadcast during the day. Virtually nobody goes sailing without a mobile phone or some connection like that. But where I think it's now become a much more important thing, as I say, is because it's something that binds the nation

that reminds people living in the landlocked centre of the UK, in Birmingham or Leeds or Manchester, that we're an island nation and they can listen there and feel part of that. It makes you feel like an island. It reminds you that we're surrounded by very unforgiving sea very often.

Speaker 2 (19:07)
Do you think the shipping forecast has remained so relevant or do you think it's going to just fizzle out at some point?

Speaker 1 (19:21)
I think there are still people who use it for reasons that we don't even think about. I remember getting a letter from the ladies who did the cream teas for the little cafe on the island of Lundy, which is off the southwest coast of England. And they said, oh, please never get rid of the shipping forecast because we

We listen to the shipping forecast and depending how strong the winds are and what the sea state is, we know how many cream teas to make in the cafe because we know how many people will be coming on the boat. If it was horrible whether they knew that hardly anybody would come or if the people that did come probably wouldn't have much of an appetite for a cream tea by the time they bounced across from the Bristol Channel.

Speaker 2 (20:10)
Right, right. I never really thought about it like that. You and I, we've already mentioned that you and I have sailed together many times over the years. Do you have a favourite memory from our time together when we were sailing?

Speaker 1 (20:31)
Oh, well there were so many, honestly. We had some great trips. The one that always springs to mind was, oh gosh, you're not gonna like me for telling this one. You decided that we were going to make a documentary about our trip back from Santander back to Falmouth. I'm gonna say anyway.

Speaker 2 (20:55)
What you gonna say now? You do!

Speaker 1 (21:01)
But it was my first trip over Biscay and of course the Bay of Biscay has such a fearsome reputation because it's very shallow sea area and I think we were all going with this great sense of trepidation that we were having going to have this great adventure. And we were bringing back a virtually brand new boat. It was a southerly 40 something foot southerly with swing keel and

the owner had only had this boat for a couple of months. And so we were all, again, slightly worried about leaving this boat immaculate when we got it back to Falmouth in the UK. But you decided that we were going to take a film of the trip. So I was designated to carry the counterweight that was going to be bolted onto the bottom of the camera on the rail so that we could do sort of steady cam pictures on deck. And when we arrived in Santander,

Me having lugged this gigantic lump of metal with me, you confess that you'd forgotten the camera.

But no, think sailing wise, I should probably say we had a brilliant trip up in Scotland in the Forth of Clyde, I think. We had really excellent wind and weather and yeah, that was a good one. The Channel Islands, we explored the Channel Islands a lot and did many channel crossings, I think.

Speaker 2 (22:27)
I've got I you were on this trip. I don't know if you can remember this. I'm just going to put this anecdote out there for people to have a chuckle at hopefully. But I as skipper of the boat, I'd said I'm going to go and get a couple of hours sleep. If you see anything you you're worried about, just give me a give me a nudge and get me on deck. And I I've always been careful to

not get mad at people if I've just got the slip sleep because that doesn't help and then next time they won't call you and it could be bad news but I was snoring away in my bunk and then somebody came down and don't nudge me and they said skipper skipper there's an aircraft carrier and there's all these planes taking off and landing what do we do so I came up on deck looked at where it was looked at the char

and then made a determination that it wasn't actually an aircraft, Kerry, it was the island of Jersey and it was commercial planes taking off and landing.

Speaker 1 (23:34)
I think I might have been that person. It was early days, Mark, it was early days.

Speaker 2 (23:37)
What?

That's fine. I'm but like I said joking joking aside I you know I would rather be woken up to find out that that was the case rather than actually bit really big an aircraft carrier there, but

Speaker 1 (23:54)
Yes, I seem to think it was a very confusing bunch of lights and yes, but it looked big. It's hard to tell whether it was something close and big or you know smaller and a long way away.

Speaker 2 (24:05)
Yeah, so it was big and a long way away. So do you have a favourite sailing destination?

Speaker 1 (24:09)
Thankfully, it was,

No, I just want to explore new places. Actually, one of the places that I went last year went on this trip up to Iceland. I sailed through the Faroe Islands and the Faroe Islands were just glorious. was an absolutely terrifying place to sail though. So I can see why it's not a very popular cruising ground because the currents there are really quite frightening.

and you very much have to plan your trip between the islands very carefully, sort of topographically and just visually they're stunning. That was really beautiful. I've enjoyed sailing in the Pacific, but I find the heat and the humidity there is quite oppressive, but the French Polynesian islands were just lovely. The Marquesas islands are just...

just beautiful they look as if they've been designed by Steven Spielberg for some epic film they're just glorious.

Speaker 2 (25:23)
Yeah, I mean, I've sailed out there too. you're right. And I remember everybody had got this hype and they were telling me, you've got to go to Bora Bora. You have to go to Bora Bora. And we did actually sail to Bora Bora. And that's kind of tricky entrance to get into the lagoon there. And we got in and...

and I felt so vulnerable while we were anchored there because the reef all the way around the outside, we protecting the lagoon, I think the highest point of that is only sort of nine feet above sea level. So when you're in there and you're anchored and you're swimming around with the turtles and all the nice colored fish and all that sort of stuff.

In the back of my mind I was thinking, I hope there's not a tsunami or something, we're just going to get hammered. Because there would be nothing left of it. Because the thing is, unlike say the Caribbean or something, know, the French Polynesia and places like that, the Pacific is so huge. And everything is such a long way away from each other. It's completely different to...

what many people are used to, know, sailing. That's how, that was how I felt it anyway, that's how I felt.

Speaker 1 (26:37)
What I found strange was that I had to really make myself remember how far away, you know, when we were making passage, how far away we were from everything, you know, how many days it would take us to sail anywhere else if we were having, you know, if we had any kind of an emergency. And somebody said to me, the boat becomes your dry land. And I think that's very true. think until you have

been out that far out at sea and at the mercy of the elements. Because even if you have forecast information out there, which obviously you'd be an idiot not to have. So these days you can have predict wind and all these various options for looking at routing possibilities. You're still out there, you've still got to make decisions and there's still every possibility you're going to get caught in something. I know you've been caught in some

in some very nasty, whether I've been fortunate to not meet any hurricanes or anything terribly frightening. But I think there are some people who can't cope with being out of sight of land. And I didn't know whether I was one of those people until I actually went and did it and then discovered, actually, no, I'm quite happy out there.

Speaker 2 (28:00)
Yeah, mean, the thing is that when you're out of sight of land, there's things that people on land, they've never experienced. So if you're out at sea and you're miles away, there's no light pollution, then you realize that the stars go down to the horizon and they're not just above you a little bit. There's just so many of them.

Speaker 1 (28:25)
Has Venus ever

started you? I thought, oh my god, there's a ship over there. And realized that it was Venus rising.

Speaker 2 (28:33)
Yeah, yeah, no, so that you know, that's that's you know, that's kind of kind of interesting. Now, do you own your own boat, Carolyn? Or do you do? How do you go sailing?

Speaker 1 (28:45)
No, I've discovered it's more cost effective to sail other people's. I have, I have my very first boat was at the time the oldest glass fiber boat afloat. It was built on the south coast of the UK in 1956 and it was called a glasscade. And I sailed that happily around around Solent area of the UK.

with friends for, I don't know, four or five years. Then I owned a little Drascam Lugger, which is little open deck boat with a main and a bism. And had some fun on that, again, mostly in the Solent area, going across to the Isle of Wight and up and down the coast there. And then my then partner and I bought a 40 foot Victory.

catch in which we were going to sail around the world. Unfortunately, the boat survived the shaped down sail, but the relationship didn't. that was terribly sad at the time because we were both really geared up to do the circumnavigation together. But no, that sadly did not come to pass. And then I hung up my

my oilies for a few years. But when I moved down here to Brixham in Devon, which is in the very southwest corner of the UK, Brixham is the home of the trawling industry. the town has a couple of old heritage Brixham trawlers, beautiful, beautiful, about 70 feet long. I can't immediately put that into meters for you,

with red sails that they are main and mizzen rig.

Speaker 2 (30:44)
We should add that these are sailing trawlers, right?

No electric or hydraulic winches on that boat.

Yeah, I'm well, I hate to say it. mean, I'm getting older now too, but I, a little while ago I was out with a guy on his 34 foot sailboat. was just him and I, and the boat hadn't been particularly well looked after. So the sail slides, know, the track, but the sail slides I'm down was a bit sort of gungy and.

There was a lot of friction anyway. So me being forever helpful said to the guy, you just steer into the wind. I'll put the main up. Well, I put the main up. did get it up, but I ended up collapsed in a heap in the bottom of the cockpit. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. And I thought, and I always remember when I was in my twenties, I thought, whoever needs electric winches and you know, that's a foot pussies, you know, and then

and then now I'm thinking if I ever get another sailboat I'm going to get electric wind!

I do, yeah.

do remember that. I do remember that, yeah.

Exactly, yeah, I mean it's convenient in some ways but in other ways it's less efficient and also, but you know I understand why people have it, you it's just you pull a bit of string and basically you pull the sail out so it's easy. Anyway, I've got one question for you here.

If you're comfortable sharing it, I know you made an incredible act of love by donating your kidney to your late husband. Would you mind telling us little bit about that?

That's a story. I remember you telling me once that you thought that he was after your little cottage in the country but really he was after your vital organs.

Carolyn, it's been an absolute pleasure. Your insights into the shipping forecast and your incredible sailing adventures have made a fascinating conversation. And I truly appreciate your sharing such a personal chapter of your life with us. I'd love to have you back on Boat Talk Radio again soon. There's so much more we could talk about. For our listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and share it with your fellow boating enthusiasts. Until next time, fair winds and following seas.