Songfacts®:

• This dark and brooding track tackles the fervour over the worldwide refugee crisis. We hear Roger Waters imagining the last refugee in the world landing in the aftermath of a Great War recalling an idyllic childhood moment on the beach.
  
  And you'll find my child
  Down by the shore
  Digging around for a chain or a bone
  Searching the sand for a relic washed up by the sea
  The last refugee
• Various clips from BBC News and shipping forecast reports run through the album. Several of them open this song, announcing New Year turning from 1970 to 1971. Uncut asked Waters if the clips were significant of anything. He replied:
  
  "No, that's Dark Side of the Moon / Wizard of Oz territory. But I do like the shipping forecast. It means a lot to anybody who ever listen to a radio in England over a number of years, certainly to me. Cromarty, Hull, North Sea, Dogger Bank…. I feel like an go round the entire British Isles and tell you every area."
  
  The Shipping Forecast is broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in the UK several times a day. In each program, the waters around the British Isles are divided into a number of different areas such as Cromarty and Dogger Bank and a weather report and forecast is given for each region.