I do apologize for the delay in writing this post, I’ve been wanting to write it for a while now but have been so busy that I have just recently caught up. Why is this so important to me you ask? Well because the U.S. Navy ship used in the film was my first ship! It was where I spent the past 2.5 years of my Naval Career, which is pretty exciting. I had just transferred and headed to Newport for school when the filming actually took place, so I wasn’t on board when they were filming, but it’s pretty cool none the less.
As most of you probably know, The Movie Captain Phillips Starring Tom Hanks is based on the book A Captain’s Duty by Richard Phillips which is based on real events and was one of the U.S. Navy’s big debut’s on the Somalia Pirate Home front. There are still Anti-Piracy Operations being conducted, but none so thrilling as sending a Seal Team in to rescue the Captain of the Maersk Alabama.
The NY Post, gives the movie 4 out of 4 stars, and for good reason.
If you look at the back of the U.S. Naval Ship you see it says Truxtun. That’s my first ship, commissioned April 25th 2009! The U.S.S Bainbridge was the Destroyer involved in real events but they were unavailable for the filming so they conducted the filming on board our ship and changed the number in the film.
What’s really cool, is during the last scene they chose 2 sailors from Truxtun to have small roles in the movie. Military Times does the write-up on both of them and the interactions they had on-screen with Tom Hanks. There’s actually so many real military members in the movie during the scenes that its awesome to watch. All the scenes shot onboard have members of the ship and crew and the 2 actors they brought onboard played the Captain of the Bainbridge in the movie and as you most likely recognize Max Martini who plays the Navy Seal negotiator.
If you haven’t seen the movie then I highly recommend it, not because I know people in it, but because its real, and that’s what I like most about it.
No, this was not the next Battle Ship, but I still have a lot of pride knowing that my first ship was chosen as the set of a film, and the people in it are people I have served with. Small world!
This article appeared first on Dynamic Soarer.
