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The expression shipping forecast designates an analysis of the state of the weather at sea.
In British English, this expression (preceded by the definite article the) specifically designates the BBC-radio broadcast describing weather conditions in the sea areas surrounding the coast of the British Isles, with an assessment of likely developments and risks for vessels at sea.
The British author Charlie Connelly (born 1970) evoked this BBC-radio broadcast as follows in Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round the Shipping Forecast (London: Little, Brown, 2004)—as published in 2011 by Hachette Digital [Sea, Soup and Silvertown: page unnumbered]:
The solemn, rhythmic intonation of the shipping forecast is as familiar to us as the sound of Big Ben chiming the hour. Since its first broadcast in the 1920s it has inspired poems and songs in addition to its intended objective of warning generations of seafarers of impending storms and gales.
[…] It has […] accompanied most of our lives from childhood, a constant, unchanging cultural reference point that goes back further than Coronation Street 1, the Ovalteenies 2 and even the Rolling Stones.
1 Created in 1960, the British-television soap opera Coronation Street is set in Weatherfield, a fictional town based on Salford, near Manchester, in north-western England.
2 The League of Ovaltineys was a children’s club developed in the 1930s to promote the sale of Ovaltine (a brand of milk-flavouring product) in the United Kingdom.
The earliest occurrences of the expression shipping forecast that I have found are from the column Meteorology of Australasia, issued by the Chief Weather Bureau, Brisbane, Queensland, signed by the British meteorologist Clement Lindley Wragge (1852-1922), and published in The Brisbane Courier (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).
The first occurrence of the expression shipping forecast that I have found is from the final paragraph of Meteorology of Australasia, dated Monday 4th August 1890, 9 a.m., published in The Brisbane Courier (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia) of Tuesday 5th August 1890 [page 3, column 4]:
N.B.—Special Shipping Forecast.—All shipping interests are specially advised in the following terms:—Within five days heavy weather will certainly be experienced over the Southern ocean from north-east veering north-west, west, south-west, and south, accompanied by fierce squalls and driving rain between the meridians of 100deg. east and 150deg. east, and between the parallels of 35deg. to 40deg. and 50deg. south. These conditions will assuredly be met by such vessels as are shortly expected to arrive at the chief Southern ports of Australia.
The earliest occurrence that I have found of the expression shipping forecast as specifically used of the BBC-radio broadcast is from B.B.C. New Features, published in The Glasgow Herald (Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland) of Saturday 23rd January 1926 [page 6, column 7]:
It has been decided to include a special shipping forecast in the Daventry programme 3 at the time when other stations are transmitting local news—that is, approximately 10.25 p.m. on week-days and 9.10 p.m. on Sundays. This will be officially included in the Daventry programmes as from to-morrow (Sunday). It conforms with the wish of skippers of fishing trawlers and others engaged in inshore navigation that information as to the nature of channels, accessibility of harbours, direction of winds, and the state of the water should be made available in this way.
3 The BBC’s National Programme was broadcast from the BBC’s high-power longwave transmitter located at Daventry, in Northamptonshire.
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