French meet storms, not surprisingly, throughout (4,4,2,5)
I believe the answer is:
from stem to stern
'throughout' is the definition.
(phrase meaning from front to back on a ship)
'french meet storms not surprisingly' is the wordplay.
'french' becomes 'fr' (abbreviation).
'surprisingly' indicates an anagram (a surprising ordering of the letters).
'meet'+'storms'+'not'='meetstormsnot'
'meetstormsnot' with letters rearranged gives 'omstemtostern'.
'fr'+'omstemtostern'='FROM STEM TO STERN'
(Another definition for from stem to stern that I've seen is " Throughout".)