We like to make the most of the weekends with my son, particularly doing or seeing things I know he’s interested in. So when the world’s oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship called the MV Doulos was docked at Portside for the public to view and visit, I thought we were onto a winner. Unfortunately, our attendance was under false pretences.
We heard about the event from the Our Brisbane portal, which just described the MV Doulos briefly and had a link to another site which had more of an account of the boat’s history.
We had a big day in the city, then caught a citycat out to Hamilton to check the ship out. The ship was definitely a classic.
Once we were aboard the roped off route took us to the boat’s end (or the stern for those in the know). Here they had a massive bookshop. I thumbed through a few books which seemed to be for kids, and bought a nice colouring-in and activity book about the MV Doulos which the three year old liked.
It was around lunch time when we were aboard, so we also had a hot dog.
One thing I noticed was just how nice all the crew were. In fact, they seemed almost super nice. They were also from a huge range of different countries, which I thought was interesting.
Once we had seen all we could see, we followed the winding route around the ship towards the exit. And just before we were about to make our way down the ladder back to terra firma, yet another super nice crewmate greeted us. She has an armful of books, and she gave one to my son, and a different one to me.
I could make out the front page of the kids book which alarmingly put our trip and all those super nice people into context. The cartoon book was called “The greatest story of all”, and if the title wasn’t enough to give it away, even the graphics on the front page had the tell-tale style about it.
It turns out the MV Doulos is a boat of devout Christian missionaries. In fact, I was totally oblivious to it but a large part of the boat’s mission is its impressive Christian bookshop which it takes to those who haven’t experienced God.
Looking at the Google results now, it’s plainly obvious what the boat was all about. However the web sites I visited all just said, great old boat on its last trip to Australia. It was no real skin off our nose, it was still nice to be aboard. However there was just a slight feeling of being robbed as the boat was here for one reason and I was there for something very different.
I went there wondering what the MV stood for, whether it be merchant or military vessel, etc. When I first realised what the ship was all about I thought perhaps it may have been Messiah Vampires.
I downgraded our score for the trip to a 5 out of 10 for false-advertising.