Travel firm offers submarine trips to see Titanic wreckage
February 26, 1998
LONDON (AP) -- A British tourist agency has announced the latest in adventure vacations -- submarine trips to view the wreck of the Titanic.
WildWings said deep-diving submarines will head to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to tour the wreck of the luxury liner, which sank in 1912, killing 1,513 out of the 2,224 people aboard.
"There will be no physical contact and no attempt will be made to remove souvenirs or anything like that. We will respect the vessel as a grave at all times," the firm's managing director John Brodie-Good said Wednesday.
Brodie-Good said the trips, which will cost $30,000, would start in early August. Two mini-submarines, carrying two tourists and a pilot each, will journey to the ill-fated White Star liner, which lies about 12,460 feet (3,800 meters) under the surface of the ocean.
Swiss and American businesses are joining forces to build a new Titanic
April 5,1998
The partners hope to recreate history in launching the ship from Southampton on April 10, 2002, almost 90 years to the day after the original vessel set sail on its one and only voyage across the Atlantic, Zurich's weekly SonntagsZeitung reported.
The 900 foot-long ship will have places for 2,000 people and will be built to the same scale and detail as its predecessor - although with 21st century technology, said the report.
It will cost between $400-600 million to build, the report said.
''We want this to be the crowning glory of the Titanic euphoria,'' Walter Navratil, European spokesman for the U.S. partners, is quoted by Sonntags Zeitung as saying.
The partners are calling themselves White Star Line after the company which operated the original ship, it said.
On the Swiss side, the sole shareholder is Basel-based G-and-E Wirtschaftsberatung and Treuhand AG. The Titanic Development Corporation, founded in Las Vegas at the beginning of the year, is the other partner, the report said.
It is not yet clear sailing for the venture. Harland and Wolff, the Belfast-based shipbuilders who hold the original plans for the ship, have not yet said whether they will allow a new version to be built, according to SonntagsZeitung.
The partners are optimistic, saying they have contacted shipyard officials and are awaiting a meeting with them.
On its maiden voyage on April 14, 1912, the Titanic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean south of Newfoundland and sank, taking more than 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers on board with it.