From staff and wire reports
The Titanic may sail again.
Just in time for the 90th anniversary of the luxury liner's sinking, a Swiss-U.S. partnership said it will build a $500 million, full-size replica of the ship. But bring your wallet.
The opil-fueled steamer is scheduled to sail from Southamton, England, to New York in April 2002. Passengers would pay $10,000 to $100,00.
Plans call for the ship to pause in the North Atlantic 560 miles off Newfoundland, where 1,523 people perished on April 15, 1912, after the so-called "unsinkable" ship sank after slamming an iceberg.
The 46,000-ton ship cost $10 million back then.
Walter Navratil, president of the Swiss-basedd Whit Star Line Ltd., had these reassuring words for Monday's New York Post:"It cannot sink."
Where have we heard words like that?
"There is no danger, go back to bed and go to sleep," a Titanic officer reportedly told Cincinnatti socialite Martha Stone, who recounted her survival story to The Cincinatti Enquirer before she died in 1924.
The replica's developers said the copyrighted the name "RMS Titanic" with the Institute for Intellectual Property last week in Switzerland.
"We thought now would be the right moment because the whole world is keen on Titanic," said Annette Voelcker, spokeswoman for G&E Business Consulting and Trust, the Swiss-based developer and the chief shareholder in the project.
What about icebergs?
"It will have modern equipment to detect icebergs," she said.
