Hi Helen. For the type of establishing shot you describe you might just shoot a digital photo of the view you want and use something like Photoshop to composite in the ships from stock or public domain photos. Then do a slow pan and scan (some call it Ken Burns effect). If you don’t have software to do that you might download a free trial version of After Effects and follow along tutorials from Video Copilot. Be sure to use location audio to sell the shot.

Thanks, I didn't see these last couple of posts until just now.