Australian billionaire to build new version of Titanic

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Australian billionaire is getting ready to build a new version of the Titanic that could set sail in late 2016, Belfast Telegraph said.

Clive Palmer unveiled blueprints for the famously doomed ship's namesake at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York. He said work was due to start soon in China.

Palmer said 40,000 people had expressed interest in tickets for the maiden voyage, taking the original course from Southampton to New York. He said people were inspired by his quest to replicate one of the most famous vessels in history.

"We all live on this planet, we all breathe the same air and, of course, the Titanic is about the things we've got in common," he said. "It links three continents."

The original Titanic was the world's largest and most luxurious ocean liner when it hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic and sank on April 15, 1912. Only 700 people of the more than 2,200 on board survived the most famous maritime disaster in history, partly because there were not enough lifeboats to carry everyone.

Palmer said an unknown when the original ship sailed - climate change - may play into a positive for the new ship's fate.

Passengers on board the replica will dress in the fashion of that period and eat dishes from the original menu, in dining rooms copied from the ill-fated predecessor.

Joining Palmer at the launch was Helen Benziger, the great granddaughter of Titanic survivor Margaret "Molly" Brown. Ms Benziger, who agreed to serve on the advisory board for the Titanic II, said her great grandmother, who died in 1932, would have loved to see the Titanic rebuilt and complete the journey it never got to finish.

In what some may consider a temptation of fate for a remake of a notoriously "unsinkable" ship that sank, a representative of the Finnish designer of the Titanic II said it would be the "safest cruise ship in the world".