A WORCESTER drama group rehearsing for the hit musical Titanic has found that two of its members have family connections with the ill-fated liner which struck an iceberg and sank with the loss of more than 1,500 lives on April 15, 1912.

One backstage member with Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society (WODS) lost a relative in the disaster, while another is married to a woman whose grandfather designed the silverware that graced tables in the liner's a-la-carte restaurant.

Gill Saunders, of Battenhall Road, Worcester, says Henry John Spinner, who was born in the city's Arboretum, bought a ticket for just over £8 to travel as a third-class passenger when Titanic set out on its maiden voyage to New York.

Formerly a glove cutter at the Fownes factory (now the hotel in City Walls Road) he was planning to find a job in the glove-making centre of Gloversville, Massachusetts.

His wife Alice and three-year-old daughter Maud had stayed behind, ready to join Henry once he had got a job and set up home in the States.

It was a sad irony that Henry should die at sea as a few years earlier he had jumped fully clothed into the canal at Worcester to rescue a young boy.

Mrs Saunders, who is the production's call-boy, said: "When I saw the film I imagined Henry, who was my grandfather's cousin, down in the bowels of the ship trying desperately to get out when they closed the gates to stop third class passengers rushing up to the deck.

"It is rather spooky that we are rehearsing at our base in the Arboretum and it was here in the Arboretum that he lived.

"It is possible that he has other descendants around here."

Meanwhile, Margaret Box, whose husband Richard helps backstage for WODS, says her grandfather designed the plate silverware commissioned from Elkingtons by the Titanic's owners.

He was the firm's chief designer for 40 years and worked for them in Birmingham. He also designed silverware for the Queen Mary (steamship) and the Canadian Pacific Railway.

The Titanic was the most luxurious ocean liner in the world, with third class accommodation better than first class on many other liners.

Said to be unsinkable, she was carrying passengers ranging from millionaires to poor families seeking a better life in the United States when the iceberg proved that claim to be unjustified.

Titanic is being staged at Worcester's Swan theatre from Wednesday, April 16, to Saturday, April 26. Tickets from Worcester Live box office, Huntingdon Hall, CrownGate, on 01905 611427.