They were going to scrap this 100-year-old ship—today it’s a luxury hotel on land

The MV Doulos Phos, built in 1914, just two years after the fateful voyage of the HMS Titanic, has had several names and been used for various purposes over its lifetime. But perhaps the most unique is its current mission which saved it from the scrap heap.

Today is sits on a spit of land off the coast of Bintan, Indonesian and is a luxury hotel. It took Singaporean businessman, Eric Saw, nearly a decade and cost him $18 million to realize his dream of salvaging the historic MV Doulos Phos.

An historic vessel

The MV Doulos Phos was first called the SS Medina when it came out of a shipyard in Texas in 1914. It hauled onions and other goods from one place to another. She was conscripted into service during World War II and then in 1948 it was baptized the SS Roma and converted into a passenger ship to carry pilgrims to and from Rome.

Then in 1952, she was given an upgrade, going from a steam ship to a motor ship, as well as a new name, MV Franca C, and became the world’s first all first-class passenger ship. In 1977, she was sold to Operation Mobilization and was renamed once again, this time MV Doulos.

For the following three decades she served as a floating missionary vessel and library, which is how Saw became enamored with the ship. He used to bring his children to the 430-foot-long vessel when it would dock at Singapore.

By 2010, when it was put up for sale, the ship had earned the Guinness World Record for being the world’s oldest active ocean-going passenger vessel.

When Saw heard about the sale, he put in a bid of $1.1 million with the intention of turning it into a hotel. He ended up winning, and had he not, the vessel would have be chopped up and turned into scrap metal.

MV Doulos Phos: from the scrap heap to a luxury hotel

Saw was no stranger to owning a big boat and turning into a hospitality venue. He explained to Business Insider that he had bought a riverboat in 2000 that he converted into a floating Tex-Mex restaurant off the shores of the island Sentosa, near Singapore.

However, this project was much, much bigger and would take all the will and faith, not to mention money, that he could muster to see it come to completion.

Saw thought he would get things going within three months of the purchase. But after three and a half years of submitting numerous proposals to Singaporean authorities, he failed to get approval. Hemorrhaging money by this time, he looked farther afield and “struck gold” when he talked to Frans Gunara, a hotel developer from Bintan, a tropical Indonesian island known for all-inclusive beach resorts.

Gunara gave Saw a location off the coast for his ship and offered to reclaim the land in the area so that it could be dry docked, protecting it from water damage. Just to make things a little more complicated, Saw asked that the future spit of land be in the shape of an anchor instead of being rectangular.

After retrofitting the vessel, and installing all the amenities to make it a five-star hotel, by 2019 Saw was ready to open his creation to the public. Unfortunately, that was right about the time that covid-19 swept over the globe and Singapore and Indonesia locked down.

He trodded on and is still making a go of the project, seeing it as a higher calling. He says that he only takes a token $1 salary from the operations and dedicates all the profits to Christian charitable causes. Doulos Phos is Greek for “Servant of Light.”

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