Sailing By
Sailing By is the title of a short piece of music by the English composer and arranger Ronald Binge (1910–1979). Binge is best known as an employee of Annunzio Mantovani and is considered to be the originator of the “easy listening music” style of Mantovani's orchestra.
“Sailing By” is used by the radio station BBC Radio 4 every night at around 12:48 a.m. as a characteristic melody or jingle for the sea weather forecast and is familiar to many British people. The catchy melody of "Sailing By" has often been associated with going to bed for generations and only indirectly with seafaring .
The Britpop band Pulp chose "Sailing By" as a motif for their "Desert Island Discs". Lead singer Jarvis Cocker said in an interview that “Sailing By” served as a sleep aid for years.
Plans by the BBC to remove “Sailing By” from the program in the mid-1990s led to defensive public reactions. The BBC recording is not commercially available, however several very similar versions are commercially available.