MORE than a hundred years since the ill-fated Irish-built luxury liner RMS Titanic set sail, a replica ship is in the making.
Australian billionaire Clive Palmer's company Blue Star Line has been planning Titanic II for quite some time now and the final plans are in place to launch the vast cruise liner in 2018.
The £300m project will see an exact replica of the renowned Irish ship constructed for its maiden voyage in two years' time.
It will be built to the original ship's scale - but Titanic II will be four metres wider to allow extra room for lifeboats.
Belfast-built Titanic sank on April 15, 1912 after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Britain to the US.
The vessel carried enough lifeboats to safely carry under 1,200 people, despite having 2,224 people on board.
In total, 1,500 people perished when the ship sank in the icy cold Atlantic waters, some 370 miles from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Blue Star Line's marketing director James McDonald told The Independent: "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.
Titanic II will be built in an exact replica to the original ship, complete with luxurious first class cabins and budget third class bunks.
The famous smoking room and Turkish baths of Titanic will also be reconstructed.
And reportedly, passengers who buy tickets to sail on board the ship will be given period clothes from the 1910s to make it a more authentic experience.
But unlike the 1912 voyage across the Atlantic, Titanic II is expected to sail from Jiangsu in eastern China to Dubai.
