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Irish Examiner

Podcast Corner: Actor Paul McGann has a family link to tale of the Titanic

The Noiser network is home to dozens of history podcasts - over 600 episodes - ranging from Napoleon to Hitler to Sherlock Holmes and The Curious History, hosted by domestic historian Ruth Goodman and with episodes on sheds, laundry, bins, and heating. Noiser's latest series is one most of us in Ireland will be familiar with. Launched on April 8, Titanic: Ship of Dreams is hosted by actor Paul McGann ( Withnail and I, etc), who sets out what we can expect over the course of the series, from first designs and the years of construction in Belfast to 'the fateful voyage that sealed the ship's fate and beyond', considering some of the questions that haunt Titanic scholars more than 100 years later: Was the captain really ordered to increase speed, why were so many iceberg warnings ignored in the leadup to the collision, and with almost 1,200 places available on the lifeboats, why were only 700 people saved? Paul McGann's great-uncle James was on board the Titanic. There's a vivid soundscape underpinning McGann's rather grand narration - and if anything deserves such oratory, it's the biggest ship ever built. Consider this, early in the opening episode: 'For a moment, she looks like she won't move after all. Freed from her wooden moorings, the giant ship stands stock still, a towering immobile monument. Then almost imperceptibly, she begins sliding towards the water, gradually picking up speed, five, 10, 15 miles per hour. Finally, after the longest 62 seconds in history, Titanic floats freely for the first time.' McGann also has a personal connection to the story. His great-uncle James McGann is known in the family as Titanic McGann. An experienced 29-year-old Liverpool lad recently returned from a voyage to South Africa, he's signed up for Titanic's maiden voyage. 'I never met Uncle Jimmy,' explains Paul McGann. 'He died almost half a century before I was born. But my brother, Stephen, you might know him as Dr Turner from Call the Midwife, has managed to piece together his story.' He adds: 'By rights, Uncle Jimmy should have nothing to do with Titanic." There are more Swedes onboard than Irish, we are told in the third episode, Into the Atlantic, as the Titanic stops off in Queenstown (Cobh). There are also 154 Lebanese emigrants onboard - about 10% of passengers. Amid McGann's narration are talking heads and historians, who help explain such titbits, also expanding, on this particular episode, on some of the quirks of the menu and how Titanic even has its very own 'ice man', serving cocktails and desserts. Meanwhile, in Queenstown, a sinister omen is apparently spotted. Atop the ship's fourth funnel stands a figure, soot black from head to toe. Some of the more superstitious Irish visitors are convinced it's a harbinger of death. In fact, the ghoulish figure, reveals McGann, is one of the engine room workers. 'For all we know, it could have been my great uncle Jimmy.' Read More Culture That Made Me: Des Kennedy, the Belfast-born director of the Everyman in Cork