COLUMNIST
SHIPPING FORECAST
Join WILLIAM THOMSON on his journey each month exploring a Shipping Forecast region
Humber is one of 31 regions in The Shipping Forecast, a broadcast that has been providing weather information to mariners for the past 150 years. Like many things, there was a spark that ignited it - in this case, the ‘Royal Charter Storm’ of 1859, which claimed the lives of 800 people around the British Isles - 450 of whom were on the steam clipper ship Royal Charter.
She was one of the fastest and most famous emigrant ships on the Australian route and was at the end of a two-month voyage from Melbourne. After safely navigating a long ocean voyage full of perils, they were in sight of land when disaster struck.
It was autumn and the storm had intensified over the previous days, hitting Cornwall in the afternoon of October 25 and moving north to Anglesey, with 100mph winds battering the Royal Charter as she approached her destination, Liverpool.
The seas were so rough that the pilot boat couldn’t reach them, so the captain made the decision to anchor offshore.
However, in hurricane-force winds the port anchor chain parted at 1:30 in the morning, followed by the starboard chain an hour later. In a desperate attempt to stop the ship dragging onto the lee shore of Anglesey, the crew cut down her masts - but even with the engines on full power she couldn’t make headway against the storm. The inevitable followed; she was swept onto the rocky coastline and battered to pieces by massive waves. Nine out of ten people on board died.
If the captain had access to even a basic forecast, he would have taken shelter in Holyhead and waited for the worst of the weather to pass.
But without the forecast he had no idea whether conditions would improve or deteriorate, whether the winds would back or veer. So he carried on and took his ship into a mariner’s hell; drifting powerlessly onto a lee shore.
This is a coastline in which the wind is blowing onto the land, making inshore waters rough and pushing your boat towards the rocks. This is the opposite of when you have offshore winds, making calm seas close to shore and pushing you out to the safety of deep water if you drag your anchor (or the chain breaks) in strong winds.
No coastline is ever always a lee shore - it depends on the wind direction, which is always changing. This is why the Shipping Forecast is so valuable; no one place is inherently safe or dangerous - it depends on the conditions at the time, which is what the forecast tells you.
And even when your boat has complete electrical failure, all you need is a simple batter
