During an appearance on BBC's The One Show on Tuesday (8 April), Stephen McGann opened up about discovering his family's link to the Titanic. The actor, famed for portraying Dr Patrick Turner in Call the Midwife, appeared on the chat show alongside Larry Lamb and Jill Halfpenny, as well as hosts Clara Amfo and Gethin Jones.

Stephen spoke about how he discovered over 10 years ago that his great uncle, Jimmy McGann, had been a worker aboard the Titanic. The boat famously hit an iceberg in 1912, and within three hours, it sank, with over 1,500 people losing their lives as a result.

"In 2012, I made an amazing discovery. My great uncle Jimmy, my grandad's brother, not only worked in the foul, filthy dirty engine room, which the water penetrated when the iceberg hit. He managed to get out," Stephen said on The One Show.

He continued: "He survived on one of the most famous lifeboats, the upside-down lifeboat called Collapsible B. With some of the most important people in the Titanic story, and he's a lonely, working-class engine worker, but he managed to survive with some of these big figures."

Stephen and his brother Paul, 65, speak about their great uncle's time on the Titanic in the new podcast, Titanic: Ship of Dreams.

Paul told the Observer that the podcast "reveals the conditions of the very people that drove the ship, that drove the business, without whom none of it would have worked."

The two brothers first heard about their relative's story through an aunt, but the McGann family had difficulty confirming that he was definitely aboard the ship.

However, years later, Stephen discovered a memoir by another Titanic survivor, in which a James McGann was mentioned.

American newspaper reports of Jimmy's testimony were also unearthed, helping to verify he was one of the workers on the Titanic.

Jimmy survived by jumping into the water and climing into an upturned boat. He eventually made it to New York thanks to rescue ship the Carpathia, and was then briefly hospitalised.

Having survived the tragedy, Jimmy passed away six years later from tuberculosis.

The One Show airs on BBC One on weeknights at 7pm