December 28, 2024 — Kickstarting 2025, BBC Radio 4 will celebrate the centenary of the Shipping Forecast being broadcast on the BBC with a full day of special programming on New Year’s Day. Listeners will be treated to some familiar voices who will drop in throughout the day to share historic shipping forecasts along with their personal memories.

Star of Gavin and Stacey, Ruth Jones, will take to the airwaves in character as the inimitable Nessa. Speaking about her own fondness for the forecast as well as Nessa’s, Ruth said “Nessa has got quite a colourful history and one of her jobs was on the high seas. The Shipping Forecast was always very important and useful to her”.

Ambridge’s very own loveable rogue Eddie Grundy (voiced by Trevor Harrison) from The Archers will read the forecast from 21 November 2021, the date on which Eddie and Clarrie renewed their wedding vows. Meanwhile Dame Ellen MacArthur, no stranger to the Shipping Forecast, brings her own sailing expertise to Radio 4 reading the forecast from 1 June 1995 – the day she set off her Round Britain trip and her first solo adventure.

Actors Julie Hesmondhalgh, Stephen Fry and Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar will also try their hand at reading historic forecasts, along with comedian Paul Sinha, poet Imtiaz Dharker and writers Ian McMillan and Val McDermid. Also reading the Shipping Forecast is Blur frontman Damon Albarn, who famously took creative inspiration from the ships for Blur’s track ‘This Is a Low’.

Elsewhere in the schedule, The Shipping Postcards sees five members of the Radio 4 Continuity team – and the everyday the voices of the Shipping Forecast – set off to discover some of the iconic areas we only know by their official descriptions on the daily forecast – Lundy, Dogger, Forth, Irish Sea, Wight. They will travel across the UK and share audio postcards from their destinations to help us conjure the places we often hear referenced only for their weather.

Documentary A Beginner’s Guide, presented by Paddy O’Connell, will explore the maritime history of the forecast. To mark 100 years of the Shipping Forecast, the historian Jerry Brotton presents an Archive on 4 exploring how Britain is shaped by its maritime past, even now the ships have gone.

In A Haven, we’ll cross the world to meet the people who find comfort in the most intimate moment of the Radio 4 schedule: The late-night Shipping Forecast, a prelude to the close-down of the station, read every night at 00:48. And Sea Like a Mirror will be an atmospheric gathering storm of a documentary exploring the extraordinary history of the Beaufort Scale – a system designed to help find language for the wind.

Regular Radio 4 programmes will join the celebrations with Soul Music sharing stories of Sailing By. Front Row will be celebrating the Shipping Forecast through literature, sound and music recorded in front of an audience from beneath the hull of the world famous Cutty Sark in Greenwich.

40 years after the Penlee lifeboat disaster, Solomon Browne is a poetic, drama-documentary, weaving together monologue, recorded testimonies and the genuine radio communications from the disaster. Meanwhile bestselling and award-winning Irish author Nuala O’Connor returns with Seaborne, an intimate and thrilling portrayal of the life of 18th-century pirate, Anne Bonny.

Director of Speech and Radio 4 Controller Mohit Bakaya says: “The Shipping Forecast is one of our national treasures. So I’m delighted that we are cracking a bottle against the hull to launch 100 years of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC with a special schedule of programming on New Year’s Day. As well as providing crucial information for sea farers over the years, the Shipping Forecast is also a cherished ritual that distils the essence of Radio 4 for so many of our listeners. It is also a moment for those great, unsung heroes and heroines of the Radio 4 schedule – the Continuity Announcers – to shine. On Jan 1st, we will celebrate our “national poem” with a dedicated day of fascinating programmes for listeners from Bailey to Viking, Biscay to South Utsire and everywhere in between.”

Shipping Forecast Day

Full schedule of the day

A Beginner’s Guide

9am – 9.30am

As Radio 4 marks one hundred years of the Shipping Forecast on the BBC, Paddy O’Connell guides us through the history and meaning of ‘The Ships’. From the Royal Charter storm, through to the death of Finisterre, we’ll explore how this landmark of British Broadcasting first started and how it has evolved across the years. Along the way we’ll discover where is Cromarty? Who was Fitzroy? And whether the outlook is poor, moderate or good for its future?

Soul Music

9.30am – 10am

Written in 1963, ‘Sailing By’ by Ronald Binge was chosen by the BBC as the musical interlude to be played every night before the Shipping Forecast. These are the stories of some of the people for whom this piece has a powerful emotional connection.

Cyrilene Tollafield remembers ‘Sailing By’ as source of comfort as she cuddled her Grandmother in Barbados. Writer Henrietta McKervey says the music has a lullaby quality which helped her during a night spent on Fastnet, and Captain Harry McClenahan describes it as a “painting of the sea”. Ronald Binge’s son Chris remembers his Dad composing at the piano and says whenever he talks to people about him, people always know ‘Sailing By’.

Producers: Maggie Ayre and Toby Field

Editor: Emma Harding

Soul Music is a BBC Audio Bristol production for BBC Radio 4.

The Shipping Postcards

11am – 1pm

Five members of the Radio 4 Continuity team, the voices of the Shipping Forecast, travel the UK visiting some of the iconic areas we only know by their official descriptions on the daily forecast. Lundy, Dogger, Forth, Irish Sea, Wight.

Solomon Browne

2.15pm – 3pm

40 years on, the dramatic story of the Penlee lifeboat disaster.

Mousehole, 19 December 1981. The famous Christmas harbour lights illuminate the fishing village in this quiet corner of Cornwall. But a storm is coming and the events of this night will leave a mark on the community that will never fade.

40 years after the Penlee lifeboat disaster, Solomon Browne is a poetic, drama-documentary, weaving together monologue, recorded testimonies and the genuine radio communications from the disaster. Written by Newlyn resident Callum Mitchell, the programme was made in Cornwall, with the help of some of the family members of the men lost.

The result is both a celebration and memorial to the men of the lifeboat – Solomon Browne: Trevelyan Richards, Stephen Madron, Nigel Brockman, John Blewett, Charles Greenhaugh, Kevin Smith, Barrie Torrie and Gary Wallis.

The Voices: Jo Payne, Baden Madron, Jane Torrie and Neil Brockman

The Narrator: Callum Mitchell

Music by Edward Norris

Sound design by Nigel Lewis

Calm is the Sea performed by Mousehole Male Voice Choir

A BBC Cymru Wales Production

Directed by James Robinson

Illuminated: A Haven

3pm – 3.30pm

It’s the most intimate moment of the Radio 4 schedule: The late-night Shipping Forecast, a prelude to the close-down of the station, read every night at 00:48. But who is really listening along, and why? Guided by Radio 4 Announcer Al Ryan, we’ll cross the world to meet the people who find comfort in this unique broadcast for a variety of reasons.

Poetry Please

3.30pm – 4pm

Poetry Please celebrates 100 years on our airwaves for the Shipping Forecast, or what could also be considered that little slice of accidental nonsense poetry we get to tune into four times a day.

Roger McGough is joined by fellow poet and Liverpudlian Paul Farley to share poems inspired by, reminiscent of or relating to the Shipping Forecast. The pair chat about what makes those gale warnings and sea area names so poetic, and why the Forecast’s mantra-like quality lends itself to being a muse. Featuring well-loved classics by Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy, evocative works from Sylvia Plath, AC Bevan and Wendy Cope, and a couple from Paul and Roger.

Produced by Eliza Lomas in Bristol.

My Shipping Forecast

6.15pm – 6.30pm

An omnibus of the celebrity Shipping Forecast reads from throughout the day.

Front Row

7.15pm – 8pm

Celebrating the Shipping Forecast through literature, sound and music recorded in front of an audience from beneath the hull of the world famous Cutty Sark in Greenwich.

Archive on 4: Shipshaped

8pm – 9pm

Today most of us are unaware of the impact of the sea on our lives: we live in cites and go to the seaside on holiday to enjoy the waves and the views. Many in past generations would have looked out at the sea and understood it in very different ways. They would have seen shipping lanes, the catch coming in, the weather changing, the day they were having. To mark 100 years of the Shipping Forecast, the historian Jerry Brotton presents an Archive on 4 exploring how Britain is shaped by its maritime past, even now the ships have gone. Jerry uses archive and interviews which weave together the most surprising impact of our maritime past on law and politics; trade and industry; science and technology; and literature and the arts.

Seaborne by Nuala O’Connor

10.45pm – 11pm

3/10

Bestselling and award-winning Irish author Nuala O’Connor returns with the intimate and thrilling portrayal of the life of 18th-century pirate, Anne Bonny. Shortlisted for Novel of the Year at The An Post Irish Book Awards 2024.

1703, Kinsale, County Cork. Anne Coleman is the illegitimate child of a local lawyer and his maid; disguised as ‘Anthony’ to protect reputations, the mask suits Anne just fine. But, fixated on boats and the sea, she struggles to fit in, and her devoted mother fears for her fiercely independent and impulsive daughter.

When their secrets are exposed, the family emigrates to the new colony of Carolina, but this fresh start will bring devastating loss and stifling responsibilities. Lonely and transgressive, Anne finds comfort only with Bedelia, servant and intimate friend. However her craving for the sea-wandering life and a misjudged marriage to young Gabriel Bonny will compel Anne to take to the sea again, this time around the islands of the Caribbean, famous for plunder and piracy.

Reader: Ayoola Smart

Author: Nuala O’Connor

Abridger: Rowan Routh

Producer: Michael Shannon

A BBC Audio Northern Ireland Production for BBC Radio 4.

Sea Like a Mirror

11pm – 11.30pm

Sea like a mirror. Whistling heard in telegraph wires. Umbrellas used with difficulty.

An atmospheric gathering storm of a documentary exploring the extraordinary history of the Beaufort Scale – a system designed to help find language for the wind.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4