Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast (Radio 4 Book Of The Week)

Four times daily, at 0048, 0535, 1201 and 1754, BBC Radio 4 airs the Shipping Forecast, a weather prognostication for each of thirty-one geographically well-defined but more or less arbitrarily designated and sited maritime areas surrounding the British Isles. What may be incomprehensible code to the uninitiated listener is actually a simple and frugaly worded forecasting statement divided into four parts: area name, wind direction and strength, weather conditions, and visibility. The forebears of English author Charlie Connelly, a sportswriter of several books chiefly about European soccer, led lives touched by the sea. Yet, beyond a few ferry trips, Connelly, to his self-admitted embarrassment, was notably landlocked. Thus, to make up for his landlubberliness, he vowed to visit all thirty-one of the shipping forecast areas, or at least those that had peripheral or inclusive terra firma to stand upon, in a calendar year. In ATTENTION ALL SHIPPING, he tells us all about it via a congenial and humorous narrative. Obviously, the book is more about interesting and/or out of the way places than the Shipping Forecast itself, though, by the end of chapter two, one has learned all that's necessary about the history, evolution, and value to sailors of the forecast, which dates, in its current form, back to 1924. In the eleven chapters that follow, Connelly makes landfall in twenty-five of the areas. Five (Viking, Forties, Dogger, Bailey, Rockall) he only flys or sails over. One, Trafalgar, down off the southwest coast of the Iberian Peninsula, he almost entirely neglects for no other reason than it's mentioned in only the 0048 bulletin. Otherwise, his meandering journey takes him to: North and South Utsire: Utsira Island (Norway) Cromarty: Cromarty (Scotland) Forth: Arbroath (Scotland) Tyne: Whitby (England) Fisher: Hanstholm (Denmark) German Bight: Sylt Island (Germany) Humber: Cromer (England) Thames: the Principality of Sealand Dover: Dover and the White Cliffs (England) Wight: the Isle of Wight (England) Portland: Portland peninsula (England) Plymouth: Plymouth (England) Biscay: St-Jean-de-Luz (France) and Bilbao (Spain) FitzRoy: Finisterre (Spain) Sole: St. Mary's, St. Agnes, Tresco, and Bryher islands (Isles of Scilly, England) Lundy: Lundy Island (England) Fastnet: Cork and Cobh (Ireland) Irish Sea: the Isle of Man Shannon: Kilrush (Ireland) Malin: Malin Head (Ireland) Hebrides: Barra and Eriskay islands (Outer Hebrides, Scotland) Fair Isle: Mainland and Fair Isle islands (Shetland Islands, Scotland) Faeroes: Torshavn (Faeroe Islands, Denmark) South-east Iceland: Heimay (Vestmannaeyjar, aka the Westman Islands, Iceland) Charlie succeeds in making all his destinations interesting by sharing facets of each locale's history, events, or famous residents. For instance, Whitby was the hometown of Captain James Cook and Cromer that of Henry Blogg, renowned as the greatest lifeboatman who ever lived. Heimay was evacuated during a volcanic eruption. Th