Costing between £4,500 and £75,000 a pop, Swiss jewellers Romain Jerome will make a new range of timepieces - composed, in part, of metal and coal found in the hull of the ship.

The Geneva-based watchmaker intends to use material from the seabed where the ill-fated liner has lain since it sank in 1912.

But not everyone is pleased with the project's inevitable contribution to local industry, with Titanic enthusiasts criticising it as being in bad taste.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph yesterday, Una Reilly, chairperson of Belfast Titanic Society slammed the decision to exploit what she described as the liner's "living links".

"There are ways and means of celebrating Titanic and commemorating Titanic and this is neither," she said. "It's insulting, it's tacky and anyone who buys one of these watches has more money than sense. It is a grave site.

"Anyone who would pay that for a watch coming from Titanic steel is nuts," She added.

Jerome is planning a limited run of 2,012 in recognition of the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's tragic sinking, which cost 1,500 lives.