"Good, occasionally poor," or: the mystery of the Shipping Forecast

And now, the shipping forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coast Guard Agency, at double-o one five....

This was what I heard coming out of my phone’s speaker back in the winter of 2016. It was late at night and I am struggling with the worst insomnia of my life resulting from one of the worst crises of my life. None of my usual soundtracks are working: I can’t listen to the news, for obvious reasons; independent radio is an option but music is a potential minefield for my emotions, so that’s dead out. 

I’d started listening to the BBC World Service via some radio app on my phone earlier in the year to try to have a news source that was outside of the States. My relationship with the World Service began in 1988 when I was living in the Middle East; I can’t remember if it was that I didn’t like Armed Forces Radio or if I couldn’t get a good signal - I think the closest antenna was Cyprus. The World Service went off air at 1am, so it was a good bookend to the day for me, and it was in English so I wasn’t having to try to fall asleep in a new country thousands of miles away from home while also putting my language skills to the test. I could listen to some announcers that sounded like the favorite rock and roll musicians of my youth. It became a source of familiarity and comfort while also making me feel like I was a real expat, a woman of the world. 

But 30 years later, I’d probably found the radio app through which I was listening to the World Service in order to hear some music-related programming on the BBC, and then just kept it around. But I still have no idea why I was listening to Radio 4 on that fateful night when I heard those magic words: and now the Shipping Forecast. 

The announcer continued, with what was obviously a weather report for sailors and boats out on the water, but it was being relayed with what was a clear pattern of abbreviations and established shorthand. The general synopsis at oh-eight-double-oh, the announcer would declare in the most perfect of British accents, the time in the 24-hour format, something I still use whenever possible because I had to learn it when I lived abroad and it was so fucking hard for me to get my brain around the concept for whatever reason that I wasn’t inclined to abandon it even after I came back home. 

They’d continue reading these cryptic but clearly perfectly ordered reports. There are warnings of gales in Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromerty, Forth. The general synopsis at one-eight-double-o. Lows expected: Wight, 991; Plymouth 990, and North Fitzroy, 991, by one-eight-double-o Wednesday. Where are these places, what are these numbers, and what do they mean? Was this some kind of code? Was this FOR SPIES? For a minute I wondered if I had somehow tuned into a secret frequency I wasn’t supposed to be on, and was excited about this prospect for a few seconds until I realized that I was listening on my phone and not tuning in on an actual radio to try to pull in a signal across the ionosphere, a thing I used to do as a child late at night, turning the dial of my mom’s old radio to see how far away I could get, figuring out that the way to do that was from the ads, which usually gave you an address. 

Then the announcer began issuing more specific forecasts, in the same obviously regimented fashion: The area forecasts for the next 24 hours. Viking, northerly five to seven, occasionally gale 8 at first west, wintry showers; good, occasionally poor. North Utsire, South Utsire; Northerly or northwesterly, four to six, wintry showers; good, occasionally moderate. Forties, Cromerty, Forth: northwest six to gale eight, decreasing four or five later. wintry showers; good, occasionally poor. 

What on earth is this? Also, “good, occasionally poor” was a pretty accurate description of my day to day condition so I was incredibly interested in figuring this out. But I didn’t take any notes -- I was trying to fall asleep -- and I also didn’t remember the exact time this all happened, so I had to wait until I found it again a few nights later and wrote some words down so I could Google. I finally realized that it was actually something called “the shipping forecast” and doing a websearch on the place names in the recitations got me where I needed to go and now I knew what it was, and when I could hear it, and what the hell, exactly, was going on. 

The Shipping Forecast is exactly as described, a specialized weather forecast for shipping traffic in and around the British Isles, with an exact format and cadence that is adhered to, broadcast twice a day at the same time. (There's a third broadcast timing I'm not even sure I understand the logic of.) The place name abbreviations are more or less how they seem: Thames refers to the area near the Thames Estuary; a “bight” is a curve in coastline, so “German Bight” is, well, you guessed it; “Wight” is for the Isle of Wight; it continues from there in obvious fashion. Here is a map of all of the areas referenced.

Finding out that there was actual logic to everything made it slightly less mysterious, but it still retained a bit of wonder from the whole not here-ness of it all. My neighboring areas were still firmly within the United States; we didn’t have a corner of effing Iceland just up the road (in a nautical sense). 

The other element of the Shipping Forecast is the terseness of the format. [You can listen to them here on the BBC’s website, no app required.] It is limited to 350 words, and so unnecessary connector words are left out. I listened to a special programme (it’s on the BBC, i’m allowed) the BBC produced on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Shipping Forecast in 2025 and the continuity announcers explained that the shortness of the format is meant to help sailors out on a storm-tossed boat in the middle of the ocean be able to hear the information that they need as quickly as possible, without the chance of something being missed because of noise or wind. 

The same programme talked to sailors who rely on the Shipping Forecast who explained that they use it mostly to check the other information that they have, whether they’re receiving it electronically or if they are still creating their navigation charts by hand. I love all of this information, but it doesn’t actually matter because I am not drawn to the Shipping Forecast out of love of the sea or memories as a child or pride as a British person that the BBC is providing this guidance to anyone in a boat in the middle of the giant ocean. I didn't know that it had a cult following when I stumbled onto it, but I completely understand why it does.

I was drawn to the Shipping Forecast because it was consistent; every day twice a day, at 5:20 GMT, which is 12:20 Eastern time. If I heard it, I knew it was time to try to sleep. It gave me a self-imposed limit, a gentle reminder. I wanted to be curled up under the covers by the time it came on so I was listening to it with the lights out and the sounds of the city around me. I was drawn to it because the list of place names are not at all connected with my day-to-day, they are places far away that I can neatly, one by one, now place in the version of the map above that I carry in my head. It let me swiftly and easily disappear and go somewhere else in my mind, instead of heading back into the 7th circle of hell. It’s not even 15 minutes long but there is something medicinal about the format, the cadence, the regularity, the cool perfect British accents.

I am what my therapist would inform you is a highly functioning depressive person, so even in the worst times of my life I am the person who is still up and showered and organized and getting everything done. I could show up and work, I would do my errands, fold my laundry, make my dinner, watch my shows, talk to friends and probably seem like I was 100% okay. But the minute I brushed my teeth every night, all bets were off, because there wasn’t anything else to do but fall asleep, and that is when the giant maw of terror that was my life at that moment opened up and ran amok. Listening to the news compounded it; listening to music or the radio was also taking a very real chance that I’d hear a song that would light the whole mess of – mess -- on fire more than it already was, and I could not take that chance. 

But I could let the Shipping Forecast calmly and methodically take me around the waterways around the British Isles and try to imagine what it looked like in the ocean between, say, France and Spain, or over in the Irish Sea, and it was both absolutely neutral and completely immersive. My brain loved it; my brain still loves it, although it is less a matter of life and death these days, I do quite enjoy the run on Radio 4 that goes from the Shipping Forecast to the general weather for Britain, before the slot called “Prayer for the Day,” offered by a roster of pastors, priests, rabbis and imams (sorry, I will take a blessing from any holy person, anywhere, any time) and then a charming programme called “Farming Today,” which is exactly what it sounds like. I try to be lights out by 12:15 and set a sleep timer for 45 minutes so that I’m asleep long before the 1 am pips (those tones, one for each hour, that announce the top of the hour on the BBC). 

The power of radio remains its synchronicity; you know that thousands of people are listening to the same thing at the same time, that you’re not alone, no matter how much you might feel like you are; and the beautiful, neutral consistency of the Shipping Forecast will keep doing what it has always done for me, give me a border at the edge of the day, something to hang onto, something to connect to, something to help my brain drop its white-knuckled hold on reality and let it all rest.