There have been several proposals and studies for a project to build a replica ship based on the famous Olympic-class ocean liner, RMS Titanic.
While Palmer has made no official announcement about his project being abandoned, it appears to have seen a dramatically decreased amount of progress by 2015 and no construction.
In 1998, Popular Mechanics magazine explored the feasibility of such projects, in consultation with Neil Gallagher of the Webb Institute.
[1] The article discussed the significant changes to the original design required to produce a safe and economically viable ship.
In March 2015 Deltamarin told an Australian Broadcasting Corporation journalist that work on the Titanic II project had been halted.
[15] Also in March it was reported that no work had begun or been ordered in the Chinese shipyard identified as the likely site of construction with workers highly skeptical that the project would ever move beyond the proposal stage.
[18] This did not happen, but on 27 September 2018 the Blue Star Line, in a press release on their official web site, announced that work on the project would recommence[19] with a launch date in 2022.
[25] The replica is intended as the main attraction and centrepiece to a resort in Sichuan, where it will be permanently docked on the river Daying Qi.
Original plans to include an audiovisual simulation of the sinking were shelved after criticism to the effect that this would be in bad taste.
[citation needed] In August 2016, a spokesman for the investor group stated that the replica would be assembled by the end of the year and would employ about 1000 workers.
[26] Wuchang Shipbuilding Industry Group Co., Ltd has confirmed the replica Titanic will be a tourist attraction and that will cost approximately US$161 million to build.