Τιτανικός Το πλοίο των ονείρων: The real Jack Dawnson

Titanic folklorists long held to the oddly unshakeable belief that J. Dawson was a James, but this is now shown to be just another false assumption. His dungarees and other clothing immediately identified him as a member of the crew when his remains were recovered, and it is ironical that there are indications that Dawson had gone to some length at the time of deepest crisis to assert his right to an identity.

THE REAL JACK DAWSON

A little over a mile from a house in Dublin there is a nursing home, where the oldest surviving member of the Dawson family lives out a feisty twilight at the age of 88, surrounded by crosswords and puzzle books. May Dawson was born in that year of 1912.

She remembers tales of Joseph Dawson, the family member who went to sea aboard the greatest vessel of her time. The trimmer who signed with a modest and economical first initial, instead of the Christian name that pointed to Catholic upbringing, identified with a plain "J", just as he had been when voyaging on the RMS Majestic, his first ship before Titanic.

How Joseph Dawson, a trained carpenter whose toolbox survived in the family for many years, left his home city and found a berth on the ship billed the "Queen of the Seas" is a story in some ways more fascinating than even that woven around his invented namesake, Jack Dawson.

The similarities between fact and fiction are striking however - both were young men, both largely penniless, who "gambled" their way aboard Titanic. One a serf to coal, the other a character who wielded charcoal to woo; and both were intimately bound up with beautiful sweethearts.

Yet the Joseph Dawson story has more with which to amaze and enthrall than that of the Di Caprio portrayal. There is more to it, indeed, than can be told in an hour-long documentary tailored for a TV mass market. Charlie Haas, Brian Ticehurst, Alan Ruffman and your essayist herewith all contribute interviews to the programme, "The Real Jack Dawson", made by BBC Manchester, which will air after Christmas.

Joseph Dawson was born in the slums of Dublin in September 1888 - at the very time when Jack the Ripper's reign of terror among prostitutes was at its height in the gas-lit cobble lanes of neighbouring London.

Poor Joseph Dawson, thinking of his Nellie as he stuggled up from a liner's innards to a star-pricked sky that night in April. Had it really come to this? But a few months journeying with the Majestic, a glimpse of home again when the Titanic called to Queenstown, and now to face a lonely death in freezing wastes. He began taking off his shoes. buttoned the dungaree pocket in which he'd placed his Union card, and bit down hard on his lip.

There was a belief in the family that Joseph Dawson might have married Nellie Priest. The newspaper report and a search of Southampton marital records for 1911-12 are all against it. Perhaps they had simply pledged their love forever.

Joseph Dawson - carpenter, boxer, lover, trimmer, Irishman - lies half a world away, sleeping in a green slope in Nova Scotia, his grave now more popular than even that of the Unknown Child. It is a must-see site for the passengers of cruise liners that placed Halifax on their itinerary after the success of the highest grossing motion picture of all time.

Jack Dawson never did exist. But Joseph Dawson, taken for all in all, was a man of flesh and blood, ripped from the veil of life at a tragically early age. So were they all, all flesh and blood. And their stories deserve to live, those of all the humble headstones serried nearby, tales untouched by a brush with recent fame.