‘It was filthy, horrible work’: actors Paul and Stephen McGann reveal how their great uncle survived the Titanic

A newspaper boy sells copies of the Evening News telling of the Titanic maritime disaster in 1912. Photograph: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images

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.