the shipping forecast

I was doing a bit of washing up and happened to catch the shipping forecast. It said Force 6 to Gale 8 for sea area Thames, maybe 9 later.  Rule of thumb you can subtract one from the Beaufort wind strength for the sea to get an estimate for the nearby land, but that's still windy.

I rather miss sea area Finisterre, which was replaced by Fitzroy a few years back.  Robert Fitzroy (1805-65) was an admirable chap who certainly deserves a shipping area, and was practically local, being born in Suffolk near Bury St Edmunds.  He was commander of The Beagle, surveyed the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego then circumnavigated the globe with Charles Darwin as scientific observer for the voyage.  He seems to have been socially enlightened far ahead of his time, being recalled in 1845 from his Governorship of New Zealand because of his belief that the Maoris had as much right to the land there as the European settlers (!).  He became head of the meteorological department of the Board of Trade, which became our Met Office, but I can't blame Fitzroy for the Met Office's 5 day forecast (they did get today right, to be fair.  They said it would be windy).  And he invented a barometer.  He seems in all respects a worthy person to have a sea area named after him.  It's just that Fitzroy doesn't have the same ring as Finisterre.  Finis terra.  The end of the earth.  Carol Ann Duffy's poem Prayer ends:

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio's prayer —

Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

Rockall.  Malin.  Dogger. Fitzroy.  It just doesn't work.