How great-uncle Jimmy survived Titanic: McGann brothers tell dramatic tale

Podcast reveals how a family rumour about the ill-fated ship led the actors on a voyage of their own

- Dalya Alberge

Clinging to an overturned raft in the perilous, frozen waters of the north Atlantic, Jimmy McGann witnessed the horror of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic. He was one of its soot-covered coal-trimmers, toiling in blazing heat, shovelling coal into furnaces that powered the mighty vessel.

Jimmy stayed aboard with the captain until the ship's last moments and, although he survived history's most famous maritime disaster, he died a few years later from pneumonia.

Now two of his great-nephews, Liverpudlian actors Paul and Stephen McGann, will tell his story in a BBC podcast series, Titanic: Ship of Dreams, which begins on Tuesday.

Paul hosts the podcasts, while his brother contributes, having done extensive research into their family history. Paul, who starred in Withnail and I and as the eighth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, said that the brothers wanted to show what men like Jimmy endured.

"It reveals the conditions of the very people that drove the ship, that drove the business, without whom none of it would have worked," he told the