The Feel of 13,000 Containers: How Pilots Learn to Navigate Changing Logistical Environments

ABSTRACT

This article analyses how the 2016 expansion of the Panama Canal changed the work of the pilots responsible for navigating massive ships through the chokepoint. For pilots, the expansion meant learning to maneuver Neo-Panamax vessels that dwarfed anything in their experience. The pilot training associated with the expansion reveals a paradox at the heart of a shipping industry that pursues efficiencies through economies of scale and automation. In the confined waters where maritime routes converge, increased ship size and traffic may render a pilot’s embodied capacity to ‘feel’ how ships handle in particular environments more – not less – important. Combining analysis of historical shipping transitions, interviews, and observations at a 1:25 scale physical model training facility where pilots maneuver miniature megaships through a miniature canal, I argue that the Panama Canal Authority's institutional recognition of the importance of ‘feel’ in contemporary interoceanic transit indexes the emergence of a logistical environment that elevates the status of some forms of embodied knowledge, even as it diminishes others.

KEYWORDS:

• Embodied knowledge
• environment
• infrastructure
• logistics
• shipping

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 As discussed below, ‘manned’ also underscores the association of masculinity with technical expertise and skill (Wajcman 2006), a discourse in maritime worlds past (Creighton & Norling 1996a) and present (Kitada 2013)

2 To be fair, even anthropologists focused on navigation as a mental phenomenon acknowledge the importance of the relationship between embodied knowledge and sensory phenomena – or ‘feel’ – in navigation practice. Gladwin (1970) pointed out that a ‘feel’ for the canoe in changing wind and waves was a point of pride among Micronesian navigators, but mental models are the conceptual emphasis.

3 Despite this emphasis on pilotage, most of the trainees who attended Port Revel in the 1960s and 1970s were actually captains rather than pilots (Port Revel 2018).

4 In the 1970s, the ratio of captains to pilots was 9:1. Since the 1980s, that ratio has reversed (Port Revel 2018).

5 To be eligible to be hired as a Panama Canal pilot, an applicant must have received a degree from a nautical school or maritime academy – the equivalent of a college degree – and have two years of maritime experience; many applicants have a pilot’s license. Once hired, the pilot will begin a lengthy training process focused on the specific waters and vessels of the canal. This begins with the two-year understudy programme (PUP), which places trainees with senior pilots to familiarise them with the organisation and operation of the waterway. Then, the trainee enters another two years of training in which they pilot steadily larger and heavier classes of vessels. After this, the trainee becomes a level 1 pilot (11 is the highest). From level 1, the most quickly they could reach level 9 – the minimum for piloting a Neo-Panamax vessel – would be nine additional years of experience on a variety of different types of ships (containerships, bulkers, car carriers, etc.) that become larger with each successive step.

6 The connection between Port Revel and the Panama Canal’s manned model is not simply a case of replication, but direct institutional connection. During the planning stages of the expansion project, canal staff working on pilot and tugboat captain training visited facilities in Europe like NTC Hamburg and the Port of Antwerp that had large locks and handled megaships equivalent to Neo-Panamax vessels. They wanted to see how the pilots worked. As they began to develop the pilot training plan, the Port Revel manned model came to their attention. The three-fold approach to training pilots for the transition involved upgrading the virtual simulator (Figure 6); Training staff enrolled in the training the trainer course at Port Revel and the pilots’ union sent some pilots; and the ACP chartered the large bulk cargo carrier Baroque for two months for pilots and tug captains to practice at the new locks before opening. Port Revel is involved in building model ships for the Panama Canal and consults on design and training.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1560534. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.