Coastal Stories

Coastal Stories

Great stories from around the coasts of Britain and Ireland brought to you by Charlie Connelly, author of the bestselling 'Attention All Shipping: A Journey Round The Shipping Forecast'. Take fifteen minutes out of your day for a true maritime tale of the heroic, disastrous, startling, hilarious, mysterious, tragic or just plain WTF. "Charming...with the soothing sound of lapping waves in the background Connelly captivates with maritime tales from the past decades and centuries. It's simple but effective storytelling." Irish Examiner "Relax and let author Charlie Connelly’s soothing tones and the faint sound of waves lapping on the shore wash over you.." Irish Independent

Episodes

S5 Ep3: 100 Years of the Shipping Forecast

December 29, 2023 • 13 mins
As the shipping forecast reaches its broadcast centenary on January 1st 2024, here's a look back to its beginnings and a tribute to the place it has found in our cultural affections.

Find tour dates and ticket details for Charlie's 'Attention All Shipping' theatre show here: https://www.facebook.com/charlieconnellyauthor/

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S5 Ep2: The Christmas Day Swimmers

December 22, 2023 • 12 mins
The Christmas Day dip is a growing tradition around our coasts. This episode celebrates those hardy swimmers and tells the remarkable story of the greatest Christmas Day swimmer of them all - Herbert Wray of Grimsby.

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Coastal Stories is researched, written, presented and produced by Charlie Connell...
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S5 Ep1: Mysterious Spurn

December 13, 2023 • 18 mins
Coastal Stories is back for a fifth series! At last! I know! Exciting. We kick off with the secrets and mysteries of Spurn Point, a spindly finger of land off the coast of East Yorkshire. 

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Coastal Stories is researched, written, presented and produced by Charlie Connelly.
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S5: Series 5 announcement!

April 21, 2023 • 5 mins
A quick update from Charlie on the immiment arrival of the fifth series of Coastal Stories and news of his new one-man show about the shipping forecast. More info and ticket details here:

https://www.glasgowlife.org.uk/event/1/charlie-connelly-the-shipping-forecast
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S4 Ep20: When the Movies Came to Auchmithie

September 25, 2022 • 22 mins
In April 1921 a tiny fishing village on the east coast of Scotland found its timeless rhythms and routines disrupted by the arrival of film stars and a film crew. A bumper episode to finish series four as we learn what happened when the movies came to Auchmithie. 

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S4 Ep19: The Kessingland Tragedy

September 15, 2022 • 12 mins
A terrific storm blew suddenly out of the north-east at the end of November 1774, wrecking many ships and claiming many lives up and down the east coast. The crew and passengers of the Ann, sailing from London to Dunbar, were lucky - they made it ashore and the vessel remained in one piece. The storm, however, wasn't quite finished them. 

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S4 Ep18: Mutoscopes on the Lanes of Sodom

September 8, 2022 • 14 mins
As well as a curious pliable hinterland between land and sea, the beach has always been a place where the boundaries of conventional morality blur. Not least with the innovation and introduction to piers and promenades at the end of the 19th century of the Mutoscope. Lower yourself to the level of What The Butler Saw in this week's Coastal Stories. 

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S4 Ep17: Horatio the Ferryman

August 26, 2022 • 9 mins
For 52 years Horatio Mole rowed people back and forth the short distance between Mersea Island and the Essex mainland. 

Coastal Stories is researched, written, presented and produced by Charlie Connelly.

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S4 Ep16: The Last Flight of The Flying Duchess

August 11, 2022 • 11 mins
Mary Russell, the Duchess of Bedford, was some woman. Pioneering ornithologist, nurse, radiographer, jujitsu expert and, well, duchess, when she discovered the magic of flight at the age of 60 it changed everything. Having flown to Cape Town, India and points in between, a quick jaunt to check the extent of flooding in the fens one spring  afternoon in 1937 was the kind of flight she could almost make with her eyes closed.  Th...
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S4 Ep15: Sandend Saves The Maria

August 4, 2022 • 12 mins
Sandend, a tiny fishing village on the coast of the Moray Firth, has seen its fair share of the joys, hardships, successes and tragedies that go with being a place for sea people. When a storm put the crew of a German cargo ship in mortal danger there in 1903 it brought together people who spoke not a word of each other's languages but who knew. Because sea people just know. 

With special thanks to Meike Scheidemann.<...
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S4 Ep14: The Firing of Penzance, 1595

July 28, 2022 • 16 mins
A delve into the ancestry for Charlie this week as he reads an account of a Spanish attack on Cornwall in 1595 in the words of his 11x great-grandfather Richard Carew, author of one of the first travel books written in English. 

Coastal Stories is written, presented and produced by Charlie Connelly.

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S4 Ep13: Love in a Bexhill Beach Hut

July 21, 2022 • 13 mins
Beach huts today go for ridiculous amounts of money but they've always been desirable things, ever since their popularity skyrocketed after the First World War. For a penniless couple in 1935, however, an unlocked beach hut was just a welcome place of refuge. Until PC Hunt arrived with his lamp. 

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S4 Ep12: The Astounding Voyage of Per and Johannes

July 15, 2022 • 13 mins
One foggy afternoon in April 1940 the crew of an armed trawler escorting a convoy off Fraserburgh in the North Sea spotted something remarkable - two men in a rowing boat who'd come a very long way indeed. 

Vanishing Postcards from Miami, Oklahoma:
https://www.vanishingpostcards.com/episodes/postcard-from-miami-ok-a-foreign-field-that-is-for-ever-england

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S4 Ep11: The Brief Voyage of Sir Robert Peel Aboard the Good Ship Ferret

July 7, 2022 • 12 mins
Britain is in political turmoil, there's a lame duck prime minister and the solution is only to be found by looking to Europe. It's 1834, the king has sacked the government, Robert Peel's on holiday, the captain of a Channel packet is looking hard at his pocket watch and the people of Dover are about to miss everything.

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S4 Ep10: Murder at the Jolly Fisherman

June 30, 2022 • 17 mins
On a quiet Thursday night in February 1866, Harriet Harton was thinking of closing the Jolly Fisherman in Brighton early. Then the door opened and in walked a horribly familiar face - holding a revolver. 

Vanishing Postcards:
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Centre for Women's Justice:
https://www.centreforwomensjustice.org.uk/

Women's Aid:
https://www.womensaid.org.uk/

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S4 Ep9: The Sinking of K13

June 24, 2022 • 14 mins
In January 1917 the submarine K13 was in Gare Loch undergoing its very last trials before going into service. One brief, 15 minute dive just to check one last thing and K13 would be ready to go. Shortly after the sub slipped beneath the surface 17-year-old Annie MacIntyre was walking along the shore of the loch when she noticed something unusual in the water...

Remembering Toby Carr on 25th June:
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S4 Ep8: Jabez Fights the Channel

June 16, 2022 • 14 mins
Nobody swam farther than the man mountain Jabez Wolffe when attempting to conquer the English Channel. More than 600 miles, in fact. But despite 22 attempts over 15 years he never once made it to the other side, defeated by circumstances ranging from 'biliousness' to war breaking out when he was halfway across. 

Hear Jabez's story and his, ah, unorthodox opinions on what kind of woman is best equipped to swim the Channe...
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S4 Ep7: Trudie Conquers the Channel

June 10, 2022 • 17 mins
By 1926 only five people had ever succeeded in swimming the English Channel. Then a 19 year old ukulele-toting gal from New York showed up in France with a swimsuit, a gramophone and a whole bunch of world swimming records.

This week's episode is an extract from Charlie's book 'The Channel', the paperback edition of which is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on June 23rd.

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S4 Ep6: Hannah Snell Goes To War

June 2, 2022 • 14 mins
In 1747 a new recruit joined the British naval sloop Swallow at Portsmouth. James Gray distinguished himself on the voyage to India and in fighting the French when he got there. When the fleet returned to Portsmouth, however, James Gray dropped quite the bombshell. 

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S4 Ep5: On They Came, Nothing Daunted

May 26, 2022 • 9 mins
On October 3rd 1957 three elderly men were driven slowly through the village of Quilty, County Clare, sitting in a rowing boat on the back of a lorry. Exactly 50 years earlier they had braved a fearsome storm to effect a remarkable rescue. And they had the church to prove it.

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