Ocean weather ships

Welcome to my website about British Ocean Weather Ships, These were converted Castle Class Frigates - Reporter, Monitor, Adviser, Surveyor, and Converted Flower Class Corvettes Watcher, Explorer, Recorder, Observer. These ships spent the remainder of their working life in the Atlantic Ocean collecting weather data which was then sent to the Met Office at Bracknell to produce weather forecasts.The introduction of satellites and unmanned bouys to gather data meant the ships were not needed, The ex Flower Class ships were replaced with the ex Castle Class ships around 1960, 2 of these were scrapped and 2 refitted in 1977, they continued in a reduced role until being scrapped in the early 1980's

The site is dedicated to my father Fredric Brooker who worked on the ships as a Radio Technician, he passed away in Dec 2009

The site has been built with kind donations, some items I have gathered myself and others from my father's collection

The aim is to record as much history about the ships and men that worked on them as possible, and to display to all this almost forgotten piece of history.

I initially designed the site to centre around the 4 ex Castle Class ships but as I have come to learn more about the whole weather ship concept I have added info about all the ships from the initial Flower Class ships right up to the the days of the Starella and also some of the foreign weather ships as this gives a fuller picture of the whole Ocean Weather Service.

Use the menus at the side of the page to navigate around the site. Access by clicking on the 3 bars top left