CONTROVERSIAL plans to rebuild the ill-fated liner Titanic have been slammed as distasteful and insensitive by a survivor of the 1912 tragedy.

Millvina Dean, 87, of Woodlands, Southampton, says any attempt to create another Titanic would be "an awful shame'' and disrespectful to the 1,523 people who died on the original liner's maiden voyage in April 1912.

South African businessman Sarel Gous is trying to raise $530 million to build the ultimate Titanic replica - a life-size vessel built by the same shipyard that constructed the original.

Funds have been released for work to begin and the 49-year-old entrepreneur hopes to make Titanic II's maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 2002.

Similar schemes of varying seriousness have surfaced over the past few years, more recently in Switzerland, where a consortium trading under the name of the liner's original owner, The White Star Line, had the same idea as Gous but their funding fell through at the last minute.

Miss Dean says the memory of the Titanic should now be left to the history books and people should not cash in on something that cost lives.

"Titanic was not a happy ship. I can't really remember much of it, but all these companies trying to make a fortune out of such a tragedy is wrong,'' said Miss Dean. "The Titanic sank. Hundreds of people lost their lives, including my father, and, in my opinion, they are tempting fate and being insensitive by trying to recreate the ship.

"I think superstition alone will stop people booking on the ship but there will be those who have a morbid fascination and it will be from these that this man will make his fortune.''

Miss Dean, a retired secretary, was just two months old when she boarded the "unsinkable'' liner Titanic with her mother, father and brother Bert en-route to a new life in Kansas, USA.

All she knows is what her mother Georgetta Dean told her of that fateful night.

She said: "My mother and father heard a crash and he went upstairs to see what had happened. He rushed back down and said the ship had hit an iceberg.''

The family should never have been travelling on Titanic. They were booked onto another ship but were diverted because of a coal strike.

In an interview with a national newspaper Mr Gous spoke of how he wanted to raise the rest of the money to launch Titanic II. He said: "There are nearly three million people around the world who are members of Titanic societies, I am going to directly target them.''

Undeterred by his critics, Gous is convinced he has found a niche in the cruise market.

He believes the new liner will be direct competition to the QE2, which since James Cameron's film Titanic, has been enjoying record bookings on its Southampton to New York route.

"The memory of the original Titanic will go on and on, we don't need another. thank you!'' added Miss Dean.

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