Titanic voyages selling out

TV success story Downton Abbey, about to return to our screens for a second series, began with the heir to the estate being lost with RMS Titanic. So it’s appropriate that writer Julian Fellowes should have turned to the liner’s sinking for his next drama. To be screened next April, the centenary of the disaster, and with a cast including Celia Imrie, Linus Roache and Sophia Winkleman, it will concentrate on the third class steerage passengers and crew rather than the rich and famous among the 1,500 who lost their lives..
The four-part mini-series is unlikely to lean on the expensive special effects which were a feature of James Cameron’s 1997 film starring Leonardo di Caprio and Kate Winslet, and Fellowes has said it will have “a more human look.”
It still amazes me that present-day cruise passengers should be so fascinated by the disaster, but with eight months to go before the 100th anniversary, they are filling up ships which have scheduled commemorative voyages.
A cruise on Fred Olsen’s Balmoral, re-tracing Titanic’s route, has been sold out for months, but places are still available on board Azamara Journey which is due to leave from New York on April 10,, and will rendezvous with Balmoral at the wreck site on the fateful date, April 15.
New packages for UK customers including return flights and an eight-night all-inclusive cruise have just gone on sale with prices from £4,419 per person. Flights leave from London Heathrow on April 8 and the fare includes two nights’ hotel accommodation in New York.
Details at www.titanicmemorialcruise.co.uk
Balmoral will also be undertaking a five-night mini cruise from Southampton on April 3, visiting the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast where Titanic was built and now part owned by an Olsen company.
And Saga Pearl II will leave Southampton on April 12 for a 10-night Titanic Remembered cruise, visiting Cherbourg and Cobh, which were Titanic’s ports of call, as well as St Peter Port, Falmouth, Belfast and Liverpool.