Sail of the century

Anenigmatic nautical radio bulletin first broadcast 100 years ago, the Shipping Forecast has beguiled and inspired poets, pop stars and listeners worldwide

- By Jude Rogers

There are warnings of gales. Wintry showers, rain later, moderate or good.

The familiar rhythms and cadences of these misty, magical phrases have been familiar to British islanders for a century. They are communicated to us at strange, twilit times, every weekday at 12.48am and 5.20am, with an extra gust of drama at 5.54am at weekends.

The Shipping Forecast celebrates its 100th year of broadcast on the BBC this year, and Radio 4 is celebrating with documentaries that are now available on the BBC Sounds app. The appeal of the forecast is huge and mysterious, anchored as it is to universal elements, says Meg Clothier, sailor, lifelong forecast listener and author of The Shipping Forecast: 100 Years. "The words and the rhythms are sort of bigger than the here and now." The forecast also attracts very different people, says Clothier: geeky people "who like detail and facts" and those who like its "more emotional, otherworldly, poetical aspect"; people who like to be "safe and cosy at home" as well as those who like adventure and risk; people at both ends of the political spectrum. "It articulates quite a positive sort of nationalism, where we can be proud of where we live as a place we all share - especially as the Shipping Forecast ignores political and country boundaries. It offers a positive sense of belonging, a sense of home. Plus when you talk to people about it, immediately they start talking about their dad, grandad or uncle. It offers that line through time." The Shipping Forecast's own timeline begins in mid-19th century maritime Britain. Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy, a seasoned seaman who had taken Charles Darwin with him on The Beagle, got a job analysing past weather data in 1854, but he ambitiously aimed to predict future weather too.

The invention of the electric telegraph, which could propel information about weather systems across the North Atlantic, helped FitzRoy along.