French shipbuilder plans to build Jules Verne's 'dream isle' says 'QM2' ship firm

Imagine a cruise ship so large it has its own commuter railway, its own yacht harbour and its own lagoon, with an island in the middle. Or imagine a floating holiday resort, as big as a Club Med village and almost as big as the Vatican, capable of cruising indefinitely from one tourist destination to another.

Jules Verne had a similar idea 100 years ago, in his novel L'Ile à hélice (The Island with a Propeller). A French ship-building company, which is building the Queen Mary II, has tentative plans to construct a floating, self-propelled island, four football pitches long and three wide, capable of accommodating 10,000 people and sailing at 10 knots (12mph).

No one has yet expressed an interest in building or operating such a behemoth, which would be the largest vessel made and might cost £2bn to put in the water.

The shipyard and a French architect have published the plans in the hope that someone might be inspired to take the plunge into a completely new holiday, or real estate, market. Normally, the client has the idea and goes to the shipyard, Philippe Kasse, a spokesman for the Chantiers de L'Atlantique at Saint-Nazaire said. "This time we are doing it the other way around and trying to create the desire."

The reason is simple. The market for conventional cruise ships has collapsed. Chantiers de L'Atlantique, the world leaders in the field, have had no orders since Cunard entrusted them with the construction of the Queen Mary II in 1999. The QM2, the largest cruise ship or liner built, is to be finished by the end of next year.

In the absence of new orders, Alstom, the parent company of the Chantiers, and the Parisian architect Jean-Philippe Zoppini, have taken a Jules Verne-like plunge into the future. Verne, famed for his string of adventure and fantasy novels, was born in Nantes, a short distance from Saint-Nazaire. The project, known as the Ile d'AZ, after the initials of its parents, envisages an oval craft 400 metres long and 300 metres wide, with a lagoon and beaches in the centre, a yacht and ferry harbour at the rear, and blocks of cabins or flats up to 15 storeys high. There would, of course, be shops, theatres, bars, casinos and other entertainment centres. Passengers would travel from one part of the "ship" to another on a mono-rail.

Such a vessel could be a cruise ship, which never returns to port, following the sun from one tourist destination to the next. Alternatively, it could be marketed as a time-share holiday resort or permanent off-shore home for stateless billionaires, setting out to a different part of the globe when taxes, or terrorism, threatened.

This was Jules Verne's vision in the Ile à Hélice. He described an immense ship called Standard Island, 27 kilometres square, capable of producing its own food and water, which carried millionaires on a permanent voyage in the Pacific Ocean between the 35th parallels north and south, dodging winter and other inconveniences.

The Alsthom-Zoppini version is considerably smaller but still too large to enter any port. Passengers would reach the mother ship by ferry, seaplane or helicopter. A short airstrip is a possibility.

Until now, the largest sea-going vessels constructed are the super-tankers, 400 metres long and 70 metres wide, built in the Seventies. The proposed floating island would be four times larger than the largest of these tankers but would pose no particular technical problems, Alstom engineers say.

The ship/island would be constructed off shore, like an oil-rig. It would be powered by conventional engines and propellers, mounted in pods around its circumference. A large model of the ship is being built for the Sea Trade show in Miami next March.

The final name of the floating island would be up to its owners but the most appropriate choice would, perhaps, be Jules Verne.