It is here that Phillips and many other ship captains from around the world train in two massive, $30 million simulators that not only prepare them to navigate and dock large cargo ships, but also to respond to terrorist attacks and attempted pirate hijackings, union officials say.
“We see [the film] as a vehicle to promote an industry that in many areas around the country is invisible,” said union president Donald Marcus, seated in his office at the union’s hotel-like headquarters and training complex near BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport.
Even commuters passing right by the facility on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway don’t know it’s there, and the dearth of knowledge has left the union and its members with few advocates at a time when federal belt-tightening threatens their industry, union officials said.
“What the Somali pirates couldn’t take away, Congress could,” said Marcus, citing cuts under sequestration to the federal subsidies that buoy the industry.
On a recent morning at the training facility, instructor David Leech assisted trainee Patrick Ebberwein through a simulation of bringing a cargo ship into the port of Singapore.
“If you can get up by that third crane, that’d be good,” Leech said, and Ebberwein, 20, an apprentice river pilot in Savannah, Ga., began calling out directions to the crew.
The room where Ebberwein trains resembles a captain’s deck in a cargo ship. It’s located on a steel platform at the center of a room surrounded by concave walls, onto which projectors shine a computerized landscape.
The projections are so realistic that a simulation of hurricane-force waves rocking the imaginary ship back and forth can make those inside the deck sway and feel as if they may fall over — even though the room and its steel frame aren’t moving at all.
“You can pretty much get a vibe of when things are going wrong or when things are going right,” Ebberwein said.
The union operation, which has been around for decades and routinely pumps millions of dollars into the simulators to keep them on the cutting edge, is paid for through dues withheld by employers from union members’ paychecks, officials said.
Maritime union hopes film on 2009 pirate attack will raise awareness
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