SOUTHAMPTON schoolboy Jacob Tilley took his school project to a new dimension when he played an immigrant child on the Titanic for BBC2's Timewatch tonight.

The seven-year-old, from Shirley Junior School, is fascinated by the story of the world's most famous shipping disaster, and was thrilled to be asked aboard the SS Shieldhall to take part in the filming.

"When I first found out about the Titanic at school it was really fascinating. The poor people tried to get up the ladders, but they didn't make it because they were third class. It was really sad, " said Jacob. His younger brother Alex, 4, and his mum Alison also appear, wearing period costume, in the BBC documentary scheduled to mark the 90th anniversary of the Titanic disaster which will be screened on Friday.

"I was wearing these really baggy trousers and a kind of waistcoat thing and like an olden days cap," says Jacob.

"Alex was wearing the same but his trousers were so big they kept falling down."

Current members of the Shieldhall crew dressed up as passengers and crew for the reconstruction and preservation group chairman Graham Mackenzie played a first officer, dressed in authentic 1912 White Star Line uniform.

"It was a wonderful. A very enjoyable experience and something quite different to our usual work on the ship," said Mr Mackenzie. The BBC chose to film on Shieldhall because the equipment on board - the wheel, the compass, engines and boilers - is an almost exact replica, albeit smaller, of the equipment on the Titanic. Shieldhall was built much later, in 1955, but her design goes right back to the early 1920s."

Timewatch BBC2 April 19 at 9pm.