Passengers on the MS Balmoral, which left Southampton for a 12-night cruise last Sunday, included relatives of people who died on the Titanic 100 years ago.
The ship will retrace the liner’s fateful journey and take part in a memorial service at the spot where it hit an iceberg and sank.
Critics said the journey was in poor taste, but all 1 309 tickets were snapped up at a cost of between £2 799 (R35 000) and £5 995 (R75 000) a person.
Food on board is from the menus of the Titanic, a White Star Line ship that sank with the loss of more than 1 500 lives.
The organisers have even hired a band – the five-piece Grupetto from Belgium – to play period music in honour of the Titanic’s musicians, who are said to have played until the ship sank.
People from 28 different countries have booked to travel and retrace the liner’s original route – via Cherbourg in north-west France and Cobh on the south coast of County Cork, Ireland – to the spot where it sank.
The Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank the following morning, claiming 1 517 lives.
The Balmoral was due to reach the North Atlantic wreck site this weekend for a memorial ceremony.
There was to be a special service for passengers above the wreck site yesterday starting at 11.40pm, the time when the ship hit the iceberg, and another at 2.20am, to mark the time on April 15 when it sank.
Passengers were to leave wreaths and artefacts in memory of those who died.
From the wreck-site, the Balmoral will go on to Nova Scotia, where some of the bodies of those who died are buried, and then on to New York, the destination that the Titanic never reached.
The Fred Olsen Cruise Lines-operated MS Balmoral was chartered for the event by Miles Morgan Travel, which specialises in tailor-made holidays.
Ten specialist lecturers – some of the leading experts on the sinking – were on board, including Philip Littlejohn, grandson of Titanic survivor Alexander James Littlejohn, and the only Titanic relative to have made the dive to the wreck site. – Daily Mail