Â鶹Éç

The Mary Rose, The Mayflower, The Cutty Sark, The Golden Hind, The Victory, The Fighting Temeraire...

As a nation we are defined by the sea that surrounds these islands, and the sailing ships that left our shores. Some remain preserved in museums as monuments to a lost age, now that the ‘age of sail’ has long since passed. Nobody in the British Isles lives more than seventy miles from the sea. However much we might feel landlocked, what came from the sea shaped these islands: our ports, our towns and cities, the law, trade, politics, the economy, art and literature, even our dreams.

To mark 100 years of the Shipping Forecast, the historian Jerry Brotton explores the sea shapes left in the land. He asks, where are the traces of this lost world and how have we been defined by our maritime past, now that the sailing ships are gone? How are we ship shaped?

Using archive to find resonances in the modern world and including contributions from Aditi Anand, Andrea Clarke, Louise Devoy, Corinne Fowler, Katherine Gazzard, Richard Hamblyn, Rebecca Higgitt, Laura Howarth, Aaron Jaffer, Andrew Lambert, David Olusoga, Philip Pearson, Fariha Shaikh, James M. Turner and Chris Wilson.

Featuring music from the London Sea Shanty Collective.

Producer: Melissa FitzGerald
Development producer: Eliane Glaser
Sound design: Tony Churnside

A Zinc Audio production for Â鶹Éç Radio 4