Radio 4 Help

What is the name of the music played before the late Shipping Forecast on Radio 4?

The music before the late-night shipping forecast is called Sailing By. It was composed by Ronald Binge, who wrote much other light music, notably Elizabethan Serenade. He also arranged Charmaine for Mantovani’s orchestra. He died in 1979.

Sailing By’s function on the network is to fill any airtime between the end of the late reading, at approximately 12.45am, and the shipping forecast at 12.48am, which mariners rightly expect us to transmit precisely on schedule. Very rarely, Sailing By might not be played at all because of time constraints. But the announcers are well aware that some non–seafaring listeners stay tuned to hear Ronald Binge’s breezy melody, so they always try to play some of it.

The recording used by the BBC (performed by the Alan Perry/William Gardner Orchestra) was originally only available as library music, but since 1997 has been available commercially as track 11 on the second CD of the EMI CD set titled The Great British Experience (EMI Classics CDGB50).

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