On 31 Aug, 20:01, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
In article ,C harlie Pridham writes:

|
| This is true the vast majority of the ships did only a range of
| observations at the surface and apart from observing cloud type were not
| able to tell what was going on above, I believe from talking to some of
| the other officers that some of the passenger ships did do balloon work
| but I don't know how many

I am pretty sure that it didn't provide enough coverage to be of much
use for (UK terrestrial) forecasting - certainly, that is what I was
told. *Even by the 1960s, passenger ships were dwindling.

Between 1968 and 1971 I made 4-hourly reports of sea temperature,
atmospheric pressure, wind direction and strength, precipitation and
cloud cover by telegram to the Met office from merchant ships. These
were voluntary observations. The practice persisted into the 1990s -
I was on a research ship doing it in 1994 - but appears to be
completely dead now. There are, in any case, few British merchant
ships to join in.