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Previous
News … MV Doulos
The Doulos is seen berthed
in
Photographed by and © copyright
2010 Stewart Mandy
MV Doulos
Ex MS Franca C SS Roma & SS Media
We
have been victorious - MV Doulos has been Saved!
Closing NEWS Update:
March 11: Updated - We can now congratulate
May I
suggest for all who intend visiting
This
now completes my MV Doulos Campaign and I have to thank for the massive support
that I have received from around the world and the now 1.2 million emails
received. I do wish to remind the many faithful, regardless of what your
negative thoughts are about the directors of OM Ships in
Therefore,
I again congratulate Mr. Saw who operates an excellent business on strict
Christian principles and the Doulos will have a ministry on board when she re
opens as we have discussed together earlier! Mr. Saw intends to rename her
“Doulos Phos” based on Isaiah
49:6, being Greek words meaning “Doulos – Servant” and
“Phos – Light.”
1. My Concluding Message
– 2. A Recap of our Doulos Campaign.
Part One - My Concluding Message.
This Doulos Campaign page is now in its final days as due to the actions I have taken she has now at least been saved from going to the Alang breakers (see my recap further below) and sold to one of the three organisations that I have supported. We are talking about the greatly loved 95 year old MV Doulos, ex MS Franca C, SS Roma, SS Medina built in 1914.
But now the Doulos has been saved I can turn my skills to the many other projects I am involved with thus in the near future when the paperwork is completed and Doulos is 100% safe and out of OM Ships hands I will retain this page as is and update should there be any possible change in her future status.
Obviously I am very close to this ship as I go
back to her longer than almost anyone that is associated at OM Ships for I
first encountered her when she was the Franca C in 1971. The next time I was a
guest on her was in
Doulos
In 2008 OM Ships International released a
MV Doulos: The short and somewhat furious Doulos campaign generated well over 1.2 million emails and these were all in support, only 98 have been negative. Again thank you, you have been great and you all know what is right and true!
Bless you all!
Reuben Goossens
Commenced in the Passenger Shipping Industry in May 1960
Official Historian of the 95 year
old MV Doulos
Founder (1999) "SCLC" - "Save the
Classic Liners Campaign"
*************************************
MV Doulos seen in 2009 and still looking superb for a 94 year old ship!
Photo provided by Sven Benseler -
OM Ships Mosbach -
Part Two - A
recap of our Doulos Campaign. “What is real TRUTH
of the matter”.
This is a recap, but not from the beginning of the campaign, but from the
time when I was advised early in February that the Doulos had been sold to
Indian breakers. Since then OM Ships in
Please Note: The light
blue is original the original format and colour, the bold black is in order for these emails to stand out.
I will commence with an email that I received from Mark Dimond of OM Ships in Mosbach
From: Mark Dimond (MOS)
To: ssMaritime
Cc: Ken Miller
(MOS)
Sent: Thursday,
Subject: RE: Update on Doulos
Dear Reuben,
Further to that,
neither of the other two 'preservation' interests who put in a bid were able to provide our Board with the required confidence
to agree a sale to them, principally for the same reasons.
Thus, and with
great regret, our Board was left with no alternative other than to pursue
sale for demolition. (Underlined by
ssmaritime)
With best regards
Mark Dimond
Thus having been advised by Mark Dimond that “our Board was left with no alternative
other than to pursue sale for demolition” or a breaker, it is obvious he
did not state the nationality. But the very next day I received an email from a
very reliable member of OM Ships team” on February 5;
“This is the latest news regarding the Doulos.
OM had extended their deadline in order for a Greek cash buyer to have time to
get a bid in, however the bid finally went to one of the scrap yards, and sadly
she will now go to India to be cut up for scrap.” (Underlined
by ssmaritime)
I am well aware that
The sale to the breaker was confirmed by Ken Miller, although, he said on
9 February;
“I am personally very disappointed that it does not seem to be
possible for the groups interested in preserving the ship to put the
necessary arrangements in place. I would also want to ship to be preserved
if at all possible. Cleary, you are upset by the decision to pursue
an offer from a company wanting to obtain the ship for scrap.“
Although OM Ships likes to play on a word, and they continued the use of
the word “pursue,” but forgotten was that on 5 February I was told
by OM that “the bid finally went to one of the scrap yards,
and sadly she will now go to India to be cut up for scrap.” For
interest this was also reported on well known maritime historian webpage maritimematters, Peter Knego, who wrote on 8 February:
“MV DOULOS (ex
As soon as
"Dear Reuben, I have just been
discussing your e-mail with Mark. He has already passed your e-mail on to our
board, asking them to give serious consideration to the issues you are raising
there."
Again the reply infers
that they were obviously concerned with “the issues” at Alang India
and certain individuals in Germany told me clearly what was going on there and
it was much like the time when the Logos II was sold, for the Board at that
time was also in a turmoil for there was not a total agreement on her being broken
up at that time, and it was so again this time!
It was for the reasons contained in my United Nations submissions that OM
Ships had a meeting and because of these submissions in relation to the horrid
condition at Alang they eventually decided against finalising a deal with this
Indian breaker and thus withdrew from selling the ship to them. But, this does
not mean that they did not originally intend to sell the Doulos to this breaker
for an original agreement had been made through their brokers in the
The next email came from another wonderful
“We have been told to prayerfully to accept the
decisions made by our board, but Pastor Reuben I have a massive problem knowing
that the Doulos may now be scrapped in India, for that is still the current
situation. However, after your emails the board seems to be in turmoil as it
seems that they may have made a torrible mistake and
they are now trying to work their way out of it. There are other things that
greatly sadden me and many others, especially those in the
Below is an email from an ardent supporter in the
----- Original
Message -----
From: From a UK supporter Deleted by request
Sent: Tuesday,
Subject: FW: Doulos
“Dear Pastor Reuben. I decided to email Mr Miller at OM in
“I am sorry but you are sadly mistaken. The ship has
never been sold to any breaker that would take the ship to
On 28 February
The
lies Peter spoke about must obviously relate to the ship having been sold to
Alang? Well if you mean that the deal had not been completed, yes you are
right, thus technically she was not sold to
In
relation to the South African issue, the details came direct to me in an email
marked “For the record” from
Please
remember I was never against her being sold to be scrapped, but ONLY if there
was no other option available, but as we well know there were other Christian
buyers standing by with sufficient funds available at all times, and the Doulos
is now going to one of these groups! Yet, OM Ships turned their back on the
very they had already sold the ship to, the South African’s, for Ships
Ministry spent well over a half a million in their attempt, they have options
for two berths, one in Durban and the other in Port Elizabeth, whilst Singapore
as no berth at its disposal whatsoever.
Mr.
Saw’s small non motorised floating restaurant is berthed at a small
rented berth. The
Once
again, to the multitudes and all those that stayed faithful, thank you. But
please be prayerful for the leadership of OM in
Blessings
Reuben Goossens
Official Historian of the 95 year old MV Doulos
Founder (1999) "SCLC" - "Save the
Classic Liners Campaign"
*************************************
MV Doulos departing
Photograph from the Pilot boat, by & © Andrew Mackinnon
Old Updates – but these still make interesting reading!
March 3:
Below is part of an interesting interview with Mr. Ingvild
Jenssen from the NGO Platform on Ship breaking who
explains how tougher regulations simply relocated the ship breaking industry,
and how the public can help stop the trade.
Q. “What are conditions like in
the ship breaking yards?”
IJ: “Ships are simply run ashore
on tidal beaches where thousands of vulnerable migrant workers – many of
them children – dismantle these huge structures by hand. There is no
containment of pollutants and no safety measures to protect the workers from
deadly accidents such as explosions or being crushed by falling metal plates.”
Enter the complete interview - it makes very interesting reading and it will assist you on how to fight how to right the wrongs that are being done!
February 25: Australian time (Updated) OM Ships International have officially stated online that they have not as yet sold the Doulos and … “If agreement cannot be reached with any of the preservation groups, then the only alternative is to sell the vessel for scrap. If this does indeed become necessary, then the Board of OM Ships has stipulated that every effort should be made to ensure that this be done according to environmental as well as occupational health and safety standards.”
VICTORY - At least our “Doulos Campaign” has had one major victory for OM Ships will now not sell the Doulos to any breaker that does not hold an Internationally recognised licence covering safety regulations to remove toxic waste, etc. Meaning that all workers that enter the ship MUST wear fully licensed protective gear including breathing apparatus and these are I have been told not available at Alang, even though there are those who try and claim it. I have emailed India and checked on the truth of the matter and here is what I have been told that are no breakers that have the “official paper work” and that provides genuine internationally safety equipment and gear as I described just above and is provided to all workers who may be on board a ship in the process of being broken up and breathing in contaminated air with, let’s say asbestos fibres, in or near exposed areas.
However, I
have to give credit to Peter Nicholl, for obviously I have placed a massive
burden on his shoulders and in many ways I do regret this, for as most readers
well know I have been a long time supporter of GBA/OM, and what has occurred
with the Doulos simply shocked me, and it just so happened that I have been
involved with saving lives in Alang for many long years and I abhor the hideous
conditions there as they are in Chittagong Bangladesh and in quite a few other
nations, for there is NOT one beach based breaker that is able to provide
official safety standards as the workers have to physically carry by hand every
single part of these ships ashore, even though water. Thus, with
A Special Notice: Up to today, I have received 947,931 emails of support and 72 rather nasty ones including Jean-Noël Grosmenil, Len Kinap whatever his real name is and I have been told by supporters that he has others. Some of the more evil ones (at least not mr alias in France) has totally destroyed my last laptop as a number contained vicious viruses and I do know that the point of origin was India. The sad fact was that my paid up membership with AVG had just run out as I was awaiting a new system and I had not as yet downloaded the free AVG and was venerable, but I was just too busy with the Doulos at the time! I lost a massive amount of data, but, thank God, that I do have a good back up on an outside 50 GB drive, thus I lost only about a weeks worth of work. As for my websites, I was able to retrieve them and download it from my FTP’s online.
Thank you for the massive support, especially
from the many OM members and ex Douloid’s and others that have worked on
the other ships (a total of 753 emails) and that includes OM office workers and
those stationed in various countries around the world in various forms of
missionary and other work. I was simply amazed how passionate you all are and
only three of you were not happy with me. For those 72 emails that were either
somewhat critical to totally outrageous or simply evil, you could even say
totally satanic, the 3 that came from ardent
Thus, my “MV Doulos Campaign” has
come at quite a cost and I am sure most know that this is a 100% non-commercial
(non profit) website and I have provided the history of the MV Doulos and
another 260 classic liners on ssmaritime.com for the love of it as it gives so
many lives great joy and happiness to rediscover the ships they sailed on so
many years ago when they sailed across the seas to a new home, be it in Canada,
the USA, South Africa, South America, Australia or New Zealand! Why do I do it?
Well I started in the Passenger Shipping Industry back in May 1960 and I love
ships and the sea, and the Doulos is a very special ship to me for I first
experienced her in 1971 in
Reuben Goossens
PLEASE NOTE: I wish to point out and make this very clear, that if the Doulos
cannot be sold to
In addition I have
already received a good number of threatening emails from what I know to be
Indian breakers as well as an email from a member of the board covering the
breakers industry itself. I recall them from the days when the great SS
France/SS Norway was being scrapped. However, I have had to delete them because
they all had bad viruses attached, and I can tell you the wording contained
were far from being nice, more like that you would expect from, well to put it
nicely, very rude and crude people! However, there was also one email from
The Alang workers lot
Suresh …
Surname withheld by request – due to the dangers involved locally
Dear Brother Reuben, as you know we have been so grateful to you and your ongoing work fighting the dreadful conditions that Alang finds itself in, especially the breakers yards. There are many who will claim how improved things are, but don’t believe them, it is not true! I went out some time ago due to an election coming up and this short item the result and due to the situation of the Doulos being sold to Alang I decided to send it to you!
Alang is the world's largest ship
breaking yard. It is almost a mini-city and it has a population of workers that
is between 16 to 70 thousand. But the Alang is also a
political irony as when the State of
Rajeesh an Alang worker said, “I have never voted
and I don’t even have an election card, no one cares. Who will make an
effort to go and get a photograph clicked to make me a card.”
The problem is that these people are not being informed for the breakers make
sure that they live and sleep in their ghettos. “We don't even know when
these cards are made," said Rajeesh. Labourers
come from all over
Vishwajit who came to Alang almost 13 years ago is struggling for his basic
needs, food and shelter. For him, the right to vote is a distant dream.
“I have never voted. Our names have not been registered. How can we vote for
we will be arrested if we go to vote,” he said. “No party or any
politician has ever cared or bothered about us, the yard has been here for many
years but we still don’t have even concrete houses,” said the
Village Head. Even Government officials admit that the living condition in the
ship breaking industry is absolutely dismal. “Even when there are
accidents in the area, there are no orthopaedics to
look after the patients. And if there is a very serious case, then we take the
patient to
Best wishes, Suresh.
*************************************
February 6: Doulos sold to Indian Breakers. I have been officially advised
by OM Ships that they have sold the Doulos to an Indian breakers yard. “However the bid finally went to one
of the scrap yards, and sadly she will now go to
January 10: Obviously the
News Releases below seem to have concluded our “Save the Doulos
Campaign” and I wish to thank the South African, Korean and Singaporean
teams for their hard work and efforts in attempting to obtain this historic
vessel and desiring to preserve her for the future and use her in a way where
people would have many more years of joy visiting and living on this fine ship.
However, that was not to be as so clearly stated by Mark Dimond, Director of Marine Operations of OM/GBA Ships in
I hereby wish to
thank the thousands of emails of support that I have received and I am sorry
that we were unable to obtain a better outcome, but we have certainly worked
very hard. The other thing is of course is the world economic situation, but I
again point out that there was a very viable bid, but it was rejected by
Please continue to
read the wonderful story of a fine ship, the SS Medina, SS Roma, MS Franca C
and MV Doulos on my Doulos Feature. This site has well over thirty
pages and hundreds of photographs from the days of her being built to her in
January 9: Received another email from South Africa and they will once again place a bid for the Doulos if OM Ships will only hold back to the sale of the ship from the Indian breakers. Today I received just over 970 emails from people, Christian’s and others who were outraged with OM Ships decision to sell her to Indian breakers.
Thus, the South African’s will re apply in the next few days, and the Singaporean company already has as far as I know. Thus let’s hope that not only the Doulos will be saved from destruction, but more so the lives of many poor Indians who would be forced to work on her and catch the hideous asbestosis and other toxic diseases that are contained in parts of all ships.
January 9: Received another email from South Africa and they will once again place a bid for the Doulos if OM Ships will only hold back to the sale of the ship from the Indian breakers. Today I received just over 970 emails from people, Christian’s and others who were outraged with OM Ships decision to sell her to Indian breakers.
Thus, the South African’s will re apply in the next few days, and the Singaporean company already has as far as I know. Thus let’s hope that not only the Doulos will be saved from destruction, but more so the lives of many poor Indians who would be forced to work on her and catch the hideous asbestosis and other toxic diseases that are contained in parts of all ships.
However, I have to say that I did receive a positive response from OM Ships to an email I sent and they are now looking into the Indian situation, and God willing with the arrival of the news from South Africa and the ongoing of the Singaporean appeal, I will continue to hope and pray that this historic 95 year old ship may survive yet!
January 4: I have just
received an email from Mark Dimond, Director of Marine Operations of OM/GBA Ships in
The life of a
superb ship will soon come to an end and I am greatly disappointed that she is
unable to remain in
Farewell SS Medina, SS Roma, MS Franca C, MV Doulos you have served a world of people well, but sadly your current owners have let you down in the end, although the Doulos has been responsible for GBA/OM great success worldwide for well over 20 million people have flocked to see the ship and provided this Christian organisation with countless millions of dollars and why did they come to the ship? Because she was the oldest operating motor passenger ship on earth and that is how they promoted her as much as possible for that was her pulling power and they knew it.
I am well aware that OM Ships wished to continue to use the Doulos up to 2014 and celebrate her centenary, but she did have some severe rusting in certain places and I have some detailed descriptions were all this can be found and it has been hidden by GBA/OM Ships for a long time, but, I believe that she could have been laid up and waited until the time is right for the right buyer to come along. However, they need the money, but being a “Christian” organisation, they seem to lack a lot of faith it seems, for if God wants them to have a new ship, would he then not provide?
January 26: The South African team and the Indian Hotelier have both pulled out for very different reasons.
However, there are several new interests including one from
December: I have been in
contact with the group in
However, If there is anyone else with ideas, especially in Asia
for a
December 4: News has reached
me almost a week ago and again today that negotiations are in hand with a
potential Christian organisation in
November 20: As her official historian this news item is the hardest I have ever had to send, for sad news has just come to hand in relation to the historic MV Doulos, ex Franca C, SS Roma, SS Medina built in the USA in 1914. Due to new circumstances that have arisen that her sailing days have suddenly come to an end! Below is an official news release from OM Ships Germany, as well as a Q&A which provides further information. Just to make it clear, it is intended to keep her afloat and hopefully find her a new long term home and have her preserved, although no details are available as yet as it is all very sudden.
I am sure most know well that OM Ships is a Christian
Organisation that does a superb job around the world providing aid in third
world countries and provides free books, secular as well as others for schools
in need. For interest I have not edited the item below and thus it is as
received. More at the bottom of the item.
When OM Ships announced that MV Doulos was to be decommissioned
I was totally devastated with this rather sudden news. However, we'll just hope
and pray that she will be taken up by one of the ongoing projects and that she
will remain in one piece! However, right now, we just have to believe that
something good will happen – God willing!!!!
I have restarted the “Save the MV Doulos
Campaign” and we will see what will happen. The link to this page is
located below.
Reuben Goossens.
Doulos in
Enter my extensive Doulos Feature here
Please Note: This feature is located on my ssmaritime.net site
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Who is the Author of ssMaritime?
Commenced
in the passenger Shipping Industry in May 1960
Also
visit my …
“Save The Classic Liners
Campaign” & “Classic Ocean Voyages”