SOUTHAMPTON'S leading Titanic expert has criticised a project designed to solve one of the most enduring mysteries of the world's biggest shipwreck.

Canadian researchers hope to discover the identity of a baby who drowned when the liner was holed by an iceberg in the North Atlantic.

The tiny body was found floating in a lifejacket by rescuers in the April 1912 disaster and taken to Halifax in Novia Scotia for burial.

What is thought to be the baby's remains have been disinterred and are now undergoing DNA analysis to try to discover its identity.

Brian Ticehurst, editor of the Titanic newsletter the Altantic Daily Bulletin, said: "It doesn't seem healthy at all. Why should they have the right to go digging around in people's graves?

"There is such a fascination with everything to do with Titanic - but this is just jumping on the bandwagon."

The baby's story is immortalised in the accounts of Titanic survivors in the 1955 book A Night To Remember.

The book describes how the baby's mother carried it up the steep slope of the semi-submerged deck to where she thought a lifeboat was waiting - only to find the boat mountings empty.

The Canadians hope to match the DNA of the baby's remains with two people they think are its distant relatives. A result is expected later this summer.

More than 1,500 people died on Titanic - one-third of them from the Southampton area.

- Originally published August 2002.