Most nights I don’t sleep well, so to relax, I often listen to audiobooks or the radio. Other people’s words keep me from sliding into the canyon of doom, where all around shouts of “you’re screwed” reverberate. For many months I put on murder mysteries, but in an effort to embrace a more soothing sort of rest, I have started listening to compilations of the Shipping Forecast, a BBC Radio 4 production that is no fancier than its name suggests: It is, simply, a program featuring weather reports that narrate the gales and tides around the British Isles. If some people doze off to the sound of rain, I fall asleep to broadcasters announcing the rain that is to come.The prototype for the Shipping Forecast was established after a particularly nasty storm in 1859 killed hundreds of people and wrecked more than 100 ships in the Irish Sea. In its aftermath, Vice Adm. Robert FitzRoy, founder of the U.K.’s Meteorological Department and originator of the term “forecast,” set up a maritime storm-warning system in 1861. Predictions were first sent by telegraph; radio broadcasts followed much later, in 1911, but were interrupted soon thereafter by the onset of World War I. Seven years after the armistice, the BBC sent out its first long-wave transmission of Weather Shipping from the Air Ministry in London. At some point the name changed to the Shipping Forecast and the number of broadcasts per day increased from two to four. Read at 5:02 a.m., 12:01 p.m., 5:54 p.m. and 12:48 a.m. G.M.T., each briefing begins with the same words: “And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office.”