TITANIC II COMES IN 2017

Titanic II, a replica of the 1912 ill-fated ocean liner expected to set sail in 2017, will have almost the same design as the original including a third-class with shared bathrooms and even a symbolic "delousing". Billionaire Australian MP Clive Palmer, who announced his intention to build the Titanic II in 2012, has said he is determined to press ahead with the project. However, he faces a minor problem with how to lure paying passengers into the infamous steerage section of the famous liner. Turning it into a marketing strategy, Palmer has come up with "Roughing it on the Titanic" as his sales pitch ahead of the ship's maiden commercial voyage from Southampton to New York in 2017, Australian news portal news.com.au reported. He has to convince up to 1000 cruise ship passengers to live on stew and potatoes while dancing the Irish jig as he fine-tunes plans to relaunch the Titanic. Palmer's new role as federal member for Fairfax has not dimmed his enthusiasm for recreating the world's most famous liner in a shipyard in China. Tanks tests have been completed in Denmark showing the Titanic II's fundamentals are robust while cabins design is well advanced and therein lies a problem, the report said. To be true to the original design the first class cabins will boast an opulence long gone from the cruise industry, which can no longer make a commercial return on mahogany-lined mini-mansions, it said. "First class on the Titanic was truly unbelievable, second class was like our first class and third class - well third class was really third class," Palmer was quoted as saying. Hundreds of cabins below the waterline will replicate the cramped quarters of the mainly Irish immigrants who sailed on the doomed maiden voyage in 1912. Palmer has made concessions to the 20th century in the ship's design but remains adamant that everything on board is a faithful reproduction. He has even got hold of the training manuals for silver service waiters who will be required to serve vegetables in a prescribed manner. Those rules also require the third class passengers to be deloused, the practice of ridding a person of lice by physical or chemical means, when they get to New York. "And they will be deloused...We might spray them with a hose full of confetti but they will have to have the experience," Palmer said. The wreck of the first ocean liner killed 1,502 of the 2,200 passengers and crew, and became an international sensation. The new vessel, according to Palmer, will have more than enough lifeboats.