Selecting Info from MYSQL table

Lets say I have a link on a webpage, a name of a ship per chance.  And I want the user to be able to click on the ship name, and be able to see all of the orders the ship has.  I have the SQL statement, but how do I go about having the link name inserted into the SQL statement? 

ex.
(in SQL statement form)
Select* from 'ship_orders'
where ship_name=(Link name here ie. a ship name located in the database);

I hope this makes sense (I'm actually quite new to PHP and SQL code, so it's kind of hard to explain what I want.. sorry)

$ship_name = mysql_real_escape_string( $_GET['ship'] );
mysql_query( "SELECT * FROM ship_orders WHERE ship_name='$ship_name'" );