Apprentices travel 4,000 miles for maritime skills

Apprentices Krispin Bartlett and Michael Clarke praised their instructors

How far would you go for an apprenticeship? For most, its likely to be a bus or train journey away but how about travelling more than 4,000 miles (about 6,400km) from the Bahamas to Birkenhead?

That is the distance travelled by 20 apprentices at The Engineering College in the Wirral town, which works with Cammell Laird.

The apprentices from the Grand Bahamas Shipyard are learning the skills they need to be able to work on the cruise ships and tankers that come into the island.

The college's commercial services manager, Kevin Cairns, said the apprentices were learning specialist mechanical and marine engineering skills currently needed in the Bahamas.

The 20 apprentices have undertaken an 18-week training scheme

"The shipyard out in the Bahamas is one of the deepest on that side of the hemisphere and they get a lot of cruise liners from various companies, oil tankers, so there's always big ship work," Mr Cairns said.

"Obviously, that being our expertise here we can give them training and insights.

"They've been here for 18 weeks across four different trades, basically to get them ready to go back home to be able to go into that type of work on the island."

Apprentices Krispin Bartlett and Michael Clarke said they had now been equipped with the skills needed to work in the Bahamian shipyard.

"Having these great instructors take us in and just share knowledge, it's been an amazing experience," Mr Bartlett said.

The Engineering College has close ties with Cammell Laird

"Coming so far from home, it's a whole new lifestyle here, it was just really a great experience to experience something new and be able to take skills back home," Mr Clarke added.

"The training that was provided here is far more advanced than we've experienced back home and so I feel as if I'll be more qualified and more able to take on the jobs that we require to do back home now."

It is the second year the college has taken students after Grand Bahamas Shipyard first approached Cammell Laird.

Mr Cairns said the college had received "fantastic" feedback from the Grand Bahamas Shipyard and said apprentices were "always engaged" and "know what's going to be expected of them".

"Going into the workshop and the knowledge and the skill level that they attained in the short time that they were here was recognised amongst their other work colleagues," he said.