15 March 2024 , 22:49
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Plans are in motion to construct a brand new vessel modelled on the doomed Titanic liner.
The Titanic II is expected to cost an eye-watering £1billion, and will set sail as soon as 2027, the tycoon who dreamed up the idea has said.
The plans have been underway for the best part of a decade and there have been several failed launches and setbacks already. Clive Palmer, an Australian mining tycoon, has become set on getting the unsinkable ship back on the waves.
The RMS Titanic left Southampton on its maiden voyage in May 1911, carrying 2,240 passengers and crew on board. But within days, the ship had struck an iceberg, causing the "unsinkable ship" to snap in two and fall to the icy depths of the Atlantic Ocean. As it sank, more than 1,500 people lost their lives.
Billionaire mining magnate Clive Palmer is the brains behind the Titanic II (BIANCA DE MARCHI/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)Like the inventors of the original ship, Palmer has boasted of Titanic II's superiority to anything that came before it. It will be "far, far, superior than the original", he said. If it manages to stay afloat for the whole of its maiden voyage, the Titanic II would certainly be an improvement.
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Palmer has since admitted the massive build has no shipyard to start work but his reaffirmed interest in making Titanic II comes almost a decade to the day of its initial announcement, reports the Daily Star. Plans drawn up in 2015 are yet to be acted on, with Palmer initially scouting out locations in China for the shipyard before recreating the England to New York journey the RMS Titanic was meant to embark on. The journey and build, planned to start in 2016, has been delayed for nearly a decade. Palmer has since blamed the Covid pandemic for the delay and hit out at suggestions his Titanic II was a publicity stunt.
In assuring the public, Palmer boasted he has "enough money to build the Titanic 10 times over". So far, Palmer has built no Titanic vessels. But the projected 2,500-person vessel has already, allegedly, received interest from a "couple of million people".
Palmer added: "I've got more money now. So I could do the Titanic. I'm gonna do it. It's a lot more fun to do the Titanic than it is to sit at home and count my money. All you need to be happy, I've found in my life, is to have someone that loves you, somewhere to sleep at night and enough for a good meal."
A projected construction date of early 2025 was earmarked by the tycoon with the ship's voyage from Southampton to New York, replicating the disastrous journey of the first Titanic, to take place in June 2027.