A historic Williamstown pub, once home to the iconic Titanic Theatre Restaurant, currently sits empty and dilapidated, just as it has done for the last two years. Cade Lucas reports on how the Titanic restaurant went under and whether a new owner can raise it from the depths.
According to the real estate sign out the front, the former Titanic restaurant in Williamstown is set to go to auction at 12pm on 20 March.
What the sign doesn’t say is that the auction it’s advertising was for 20 March, 2025, when the “landmark waterfront pub” on Nelson Place, the oldest in Williamstown, was passed in after failing to attract a buyer at the $3.5 million price its owner was seeking.
But while the real estate sign might be misleading, it’s also fitting, as both it and the pub it’s attached to are outdated and seemingly forgotten.
Estate agents Tsimos Commercial concede the point when it comes to their sign, but insist that the pub built in 1856 and long known as the Prince of Wales, certainly hasn’t been forgotten by potential buyers.
“Pretty steady interest,” was how Tsimios Commercial agent John Black described the amount of inquiries they were getting for the pub, which has sat vacant and on the market since January 2024.
“We just haven’t got a suitable replacement (owner) yet.”
Mr Black said while an extensive fit out was needed inside, he hoped the pub would still fetch between $3.5-$4 million, arguing it had huge potential.
“It has a lot of history and in a prominent position, it’s just a case of getting the right person,” he said.
“You get the right person who believes they can breathe life into the place then who knows, there’s a planet of possibilities for it.”
Mr Black didn’t mention it, but this is the exact scenario which turned the Prince of Wales Hotel into the Titanic in the first place.
In 1989, a brash young entrepreneur by the name of Andrew Singer, bought the Prince of Wales, which was then still largely what it had always been; a watering hole for dock workers from the Williamstown shipyards across the road.
But just as the privatisation of the shipyards a year earlier had resulted in many dock workers losing their jobs, the arrival of Mr Singer resulted in those who remained losing their favourite pub too.
Born in communist Hungary, Mr Singer had escaped to Australia as a 21-year-old and had gone from having no money and no English to being successful businessman with dreams that far exceeded serving cold pots to thirsty dock workers.
Mr Singer quickly set about transforming the Prince of Wales into a Titanic-themed restaurant, replete with smoke stacks on the roof and replica furnishings and decor inside.
With capacity of more than 500 diners across two storeys, the Titanic Restaurant was like its namesake; big, extravagant and initially, very successful.
Unlike anything else on offer at the time, it quickly became a go to destination for diners and partygoers across Melbourne.
That was until 1995, when tragedy struck.
Mr Singer’s wife Katrina contracted pneumonia and died soon after, leaving him a widower and single father to two young boys.
After briefly putting the restaurant on the market, Mr Singer changed his mind, deciding to not only continue, but to go even further.
The Titanic Restaurant was to become a full-fledged theatre production and dining experience, with costume-clad actors and musicians depicting the events of 10 April, 1912 while guests enjoyed upmarket cuisine. Realising he needed a writer – among many other things – to make this vision a reality, in early 1996 Mr Singer called then-Williamstown-based author and playwright, Gillian Wadds, out of the blue.
“I got a phone call saying “I believe you write plays?” Ms Wadds recalled of the first time she spoke to Mr Singer.
“I had written one.”
Surprised but intrigued, she signed on.
“It was a whole new world for myself and for Andrew really,” Ms Wadds said of writing for a theatre restaurant.
“The first performance was a bit hit and miss shall we say, but then we got into the swing of and audiences loved it and we expanded as the years went by.”
That expansion was supercharged the following year with the release of James Cameron’s blockbuster movie ‘Titanic,’ which shattered box-office records and became a cultural phenomenon.
“[The movie] gave it an enormous boost,” Ms Wadds said of the impact Titanic had on its theatre restaurant namesake which offered diners multiple options: upstairs in first class or downstairs in steerage like the Irish immigrants making their way to America.
“That was very innovative because we had to have cast members who could play between both floors and keep both audiences entertained.
“It was a big undertaking from all directions. We had sound effects, special effects, like a moving floor and crashing ice blocks and God knows what.”
After seven years Ms Wadds left the theatre restaurant and Williamstown to move to Camperdown in western Victoria where she still lives today.
After not seeing him for many years, Ms Wadds reconnected with Mr Singer when he asked her to write his biography, ‘A Shipload of Fun’ released in 2022.
She said working book brought back fond memories of their time together at the Titanic.
“It was a magical place,” she said.
“His imagination was limitless.”
Mr Singer sold out of the restaurant in 2012 and is now retired.
The Titanic business was bought by Williamstown couple David Varney and Adrienne Rush who operated it for a further eight years.
“I met Adrienne at the Titanic,” Mr Varney said of their connection to the theatre restaurant, adding that he worked at the Prince of Wales when Mr Singer first took it over as well.
“It’s been an integral part of our lives.”
The couple took over shortly before the 100th anniversary of the Titanic and with new actors and a new show, the business was sailing along nicely.
“We were doing very well,” Mr Varney said.
“I used to love Saturday night pre-show, everybody was ready and we could hear this excitement almost life the ship was setting sail for its maiden voyage.”
This came to an abrupt end in 2020 when the pandemic made running any hospitality venue difficult, let alone a two-storey theatre restaurant.
“We just had to walk away,” Mr Varney said.
“It was a restaurant for 300 people and at one stage they said we could open for 20 people. It was heart breaking.”
While the restaurant later reopened, the theatre performances never returned.
In 2022, new lessees changed the name to Titanic on Nelson and turned it to a live music venue, before it too closed in January 2024.
With the smoke stacks removed and all the other Titanic features either gone or in disrepair, passing 1 Nelson Place is now a painful experience for Mr Varney.
“I drive down there sometimes. It’s heart-breaking for me to see it like it is,” he said.
“I would love to see it resurrected as a beautiful iconic building. I’d love to see somebody give it the love that it deserves.”
Mr Singer was contacted for comment.
