A former tech developer bought a rusty 1955 cruise ship on Craigslist and estimates he's spent $1 million restoring it. Check it out.

• Christopher Willson bought an old cruise ship off Craigslist 14 years ago.

• The ship, named Aurora, was one of the first vessels Germany built post-WWII, Willson said.

• Willson plans to transform it into a bed and breakfast and a coastal cruiser.

When Christopher Willson found an old cruise ship on Craigslist in 2008, it was a happy accident.

Willson, a former tech developer, was working on virtual-tour software when he stumbled across a cruise ship named "Faithful" on Craigslist. Keen to do a virtual tour of the ship, he reached out to the owner.

"I pretended to be a potential buyer, and the owner, who was a ship salvager, let me on board. After doing the virtual tour, I went home curious about the ship's history but could not find anything about it," Willson told Insider.

Willson spent days researching the ship's history until he found a photo that looked exactly like the vessel.

"I went through over hundreds of images of vintage ocean liners, and did a lot of matching and cross-referencing of the ship's appearance before I found a match," Willson said.

Willson discovered that the ship was the Wappen von Hamburg, one of the first ships Germany officially built after WWII.

Willson decided to buy the ship, which was covered in layers of old paint, because of its historical value.

Willson told Insider the ship was listed on Craigslist for $1.2 million, but he negotiated with the seller to slash the buying price in half. Insider was not able to independently verify the price of the ship.

After Willson took ownership of the vessel, he renamed it Aurora.

German shipbuilding company Blohm+Voss, which built the ship, confirmed to Insider that Aurora and the Wappen von Hamburg are the same ship.

Willson didn't have any ship-building experience, but his past career as a disaster-recovery specialist taught him how to fix things.

Willson spent 13 years traveling to places destroyed by fires and floods to salvage mechanical and electrical equipment for insurance restoration companies.

"I have always been a fast learner and was always good at working with my hands. I've rebuilt a bunch of cars," Willson said.

The 293-foot cruise ship had three decks, 85 cabins with en-suite bathrooms, a dining room and salon, an outdoor swimming pool, and a lot of structural issues when Willson bought it.

When Willson took ownership of the cruise ship, he it was full of cardboard boxes, old chairs, and mattresses.

"Some of it was useable stuff, but just a lot of it was absolute garbage that we had to get rid of," Willson said in one of his YouTube videos.

The wood on the deck had been completely destroyed by moisture, Willson said. He had to get rid of all the rotted wood and rust before he could even begin the restoration process.

To give Aurora's hallway a new lease on life, Willson removed the concrete floors and the wood-paneled walls to address the underlying damage.

The passageway is now carpeted and has fresh coats of paint.

In 2015, Willson created a Facebook page called Aurora Project Restoration. People started sharing more information about the ship.