In 2018, a fully-functioning replica of the Titanic will be sailing the seas, thanks to an Australian billionaire named Clive Palmer. The project will be two years late, but a spokesman for the mogul shared that it had not been abandoned and merely delayed. The only difference that this Titanic II will have over the Belfast-built luxury liner which sank on April in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, is that the ship will have some modern improvements. Reports from Belfast Telegraph says the ship will also be four meters wider to meet today’s maritime safety regulations, and the hull will be welded, not riveted.
“The new Titanic will of course have modern evacuation procedures, satellite controls, digital navigation and radar systems and all those things you’d expect on a 21st century ship,” the global marketing director of Palmer’s company Blue Star Line, James McDonald, said.
Offering first, second and third-class tickets, the Titanic II will have nine floors and 840 cabins capable of accommodating 2,400 passengers and 900 crew members. There will also be Turkish baths, a swimming pool and a gymnasium.
The original Titanic’s planned route was from Southampton to New York, but the new ship’s maiden voyage will instead travel from Jiangsu, China to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where Blue Star Line has been forging business partnerships.
“We are not looking for investment from Dubai, as it is a project we are funding ourselves, but we have been in contact with a number of companies based in the Emirates who are looking at utilizing opportunities that arises with the project,” Mr McDonald said. “It is people looking to use the opportunity of the trademark and licensing potential of the project… We own the Titanic II name and trademark and people are lining up to be part of it.”
In April 2012, on the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking, Blue Star announced that the state-owned Chinese shipyard CSC Jinling has been contracted to build the replica ship. While relatives of the passengers that passed in the tragic event have called their plans to built a replica as insensitive, McDonald said that the project had received a largely positive response with Blue Star being inundated with inquires from people who are looking to join them when they hit the seas.
Some relatives of passengers who died in the tragedy have called plans to build a replica as insensitive, but McDonald said the project had received a largely positive response with Blue Star being inundated with inquiries from potential passengers.
