John Harper Titanic

John Harper (1872-1912) was a Scottish Baptist minister who died when th RMS Titanic sank on 15th April 1912.

John was born on the 29th May 1872 in the village of Houston, Renfrewshire, Scotland. He embraced his parents Christian faith when he was aged 14 and began preaching aged 18.

He supported himself as a young adult by doing manual work in a mill until Baptist pastor E. A. Carter of Baptist Pioneer Mission of London heard him preach. Carter placed him in ministry work in Govan, Scotland.

In 1897 he became the first pastor of Paisley Road Baptist Church in Glasgow. Under his care the church grew from 25 to over 500. They then moved to a new location on Plantation Street. In 1923 they moved to their present building on Craigiehall Street and renamed it Harper Memorial Baptist Church in his honour.

By 1912 John was pastor of Walworth Road Baptist Church, in London. He was a widower with a 6 year old daughter Annie Jessie (Nana).

He boarded the Titanic, with his daughter and sister Jessie W. Leitch, to go and preach in the Moody Church in Chicago, where he had preached the previous fall.

The ‘unsinkable’ Titanic hit an iceberg on the 14th April and was lost. His daughter and sister were placed in a lifeboat and survived. John refused a seat on the lifeboat and stayed behind. He then jumped into the water as the ship began to sink. Some survivors said that John preached the Gospel to the end
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved Acts 16 v31
first aboard the sinking ship and then afterwards to those in the freezing water before dying himself.

One report says that John knowing he could not survive long in the icy water, took off his life jacket and threw it to another person with these words* You need it more than I do! * Moments later Harper disappeared beneath the water. 4 years later, when there was a reunion of the survivors of the Titanic the man to whom Harper had witnessed told the story of the rescue and gave testimony of his conversion recorded in a tract - I was John Harper’s Last convert

His daughter, Annie Jessie, married a pastor, and went on to be the longest living Scottish Titanic survivor and died in 1986.

A hundred plus years after his death we are still benefitting from the lasting effects of those final moments before he sank into the ocean. He left an example for 10s of 1000s of us who would never have heard of him if he had survived. God sees the big picture; we see but a small slice.

A letter, written by John before he got on board, was auctioned in 2020. at a Titanic memorabilia in Wiltshire, for £42k. The auctioneer, Andrew Aldridge said , John Harper was probably one of the bravest men on that boat.

Sources used
Wikipedia
Challenging the Physical Elements by Tony Batchelor