Billionaire Clive Palmer's Titanic replica plans hit the rocks

Mining billionaire turned politician Clive Palmer's highly publicised $500 million plan to build a replica of the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic has apparently sunk without even getting off the drawing board.

Announced to considerable fanfare in 2012, Palmer claimed that the replica vessel, which was to have been built in China, would set sail sometime during 2016 and then regularly voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Southampton in the UK to New York.

In a series of lavish announcements, including press conferences at London's Ritz Hotel and Southampton's former South Western Hotel as well as in New York, Palmer was confident his ship would launch "a new era in transatlantic travel".

According to the mining magnate, who also owns the Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast, Titanic II would have been the flagship of a proposed cruise company Blue Star Line with an intended launch date of the vessel this year, although this timing was later altered to 2018.

Now at least four years behind schedule, Titanic II would have represented the first major passenger vessel constructed in China, a country with much more experience of building cargo ships than cruise ships.

Owned by Palmer, Blue Star Line reportedly signed a memorandum of understanding with AVIC Kaixin Beijing Ship Industry to help promote the project and provide funding to develop the ship.

The replica liner was to have been 270 metres long and 50 metre with 840 rooms and nine decks and would have required significant investment to ensure it met the much more stringent safety requirements for passenger vessels today, as compared to a century ago.

The original Titanic, built in Belfast by Harland and Wolff and operated by the White Star Line, sank after striking an iceberg on her first voyage in 1911, killing more than 1,500 passengers and crew in the world’s most famous shipping tragedy.

The proposal to build a replica commercialised replica of Titanic attracted criticism and speculation from the outset, being described as "insensitive" and "a mockery of the memory of those who died".

A spokesman for the Cunard Line, which merged with the White Star Line, stated that it "had always been very mindful and very respectful of such a tragic event (and) don't think that building a replica or a 'II' would be appropriate."

Workers at the shipyards in Nanjing, in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, were the Titanic II was to have been built are reportedly sceptical that the ship would ever be built.

According to a report in The Australian, one worked stated “that ship was just a proposal. It’s never been carried out and the project has never launched.”

Images: An artist's impression of Titanic II entering New York (top) and Clive Palmer at the 2012 announcement (below).

18th March 2015 - PALMER COOLUM RESORT SACKS STAFF AND CLOSES ACCOMMODATION FACILITIES FOR RENOVATIONS

28th February 2013 - BILLIONAIRE PALMER UNVEILS PLANS TO REBUILD THE TITANIC 

28th February 2013 - GOLD COAST NEW HOME OF THE PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

27th September 2011 - TITANIC SET TO ARRIVE AT SINGAPORE’S ARTSCIENCE MUSEUM

27th September 2010 - TITANIC EXHIBITION SETS VISITOR RECORD ​

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