The Titanic's Last Hero (2 page)

The
Titanic’s
lavish extravagance and record-breaking size awed the golden age of shipbuilding. Her 50,000 hp engines that produced the twenty-four knots-per-hour speed were secured in sixteen watertight compartments. Each was protected by steel bulkheads. At the time of her launch, the
Titanic
was the world’s largest, man-made moveable object. After making its first two passenger and mail stops at Cherbourg and Queenstown, Ireland, passengers gained an increased sense of security. Harper wrote a letter to his friend Charles Livingstone before docking at Queenstown, saying, “Thus far the passage is all that can be desired.”

At 11:40 p.m. on April 14, 1912, an iceberg scraped the ship’s starboard side, showering the decks with ice and ripping open six watertight compartments. The sea poured in. Most passengers remained unconvinced that the
Titanic
would go down until the crew started shooting flares into the air. Charles Pellegrino, author of
Ghosts of the Titanic
, imagined that “the water sparked for miles around. Lifeboats could be seen on it…. In that cave of manmade light, minds too were illuminated. Everyone understood the message of the rockets without being told.”

After the flares, no one had to be persuaded to enter a lifeboat. Then, when the water had crept halfway to the bridge, a sudden crashing sound like a warehouse of fine china being shattered tore through the darkness. As the stern of the Titanic rose high in the sky to begin her descent to the ocean floor, that explosive sound shook the night air. Passengers joined hands and leaped into the water. At 2:20 a.m., the Titanic began her slow glide downward, leaving a mushroom-like cloud of smoke and steam above her watery grave.

In the icy waters of the North Atlantic, in the dead of night, the most famous ship in the world ended her one and only voyage but gained a nautical mystique second only to Noah’s ark. It happened so fast that Harper could only react. His response left an historic example of courage and faith. “The heroes of mankind,” said English churchman A.P. Stanley, “are the mountains, the highlands of the moral world.” Such a hero was John Harper.

THE HARDEST PART OF HIS HEROISM

It is never easy to undertake such heroic actions, and for John Harper, it was exceptionally difficult. After a very brief married life, John Harper had lost his wife early in the year 1906, shortly after the birth of their only child. His little daughter, Annie Jessie “Nan” Harper, and her nanny were traveling with him. Nan was just a few months past her sixth birthday. The tragedy of the Titanic would leave her an orphan. However, the blessing of the Lord would surely rest on the little girl. “A Father of the fatherless … is God in His holy habitation” (Psalm 68:5).

When the alarm sounded the end of the
Titanic
, Harper immediately handed Nan to an upper deck captain with instructions to get her into a lifeboat. Then he turned back to help others.

Knowing that his young daughter would be both motherless and fatherless had to have been heartbreaking for Harper. Once, after he had narrowly escaped drowning at age thirty-two, he had said, “The fear of death did not for one moment disturb me. I believed that sudden death would be sudden glory, but, there was a wee, motherless girl in Glasgow.” He had survived then. He would not survive now.

(Nan’s life was indeed spared. She was rescued and returned to Scotland. There, she grew up, married a preacher, and dedicated her entire life to the Lord her father had served.)

THE HERO IN CONTRAST

This Scotsman’s selfless heroism is accentuated by the contrasting conduct of many fellow passengers on this death voyage. While Harper gave up his life jacket, an American banker managed to get a pet dog into a lifeboat, leaving nearly1,520 humans unaided. Records indicate that two lapdogs were saved that tragic night. There was little of the “go-down-with-the-ship” spirit to be seen in the chaos. Of the 705 or so saved, about 200 were crewmen!

Colonel John Jacob Astor IV tried to escape with his pregnant wife, Madeleine Force Astor, in a lifeboat. His plan was thwarted when Second Officer Charles Lightoller prevented him from boarding with her. Astor was the richest man in the world, but all his money couldn’t gain him a seat in a lifeboat that night, and he perished. He was forty-seven years old.

It has been claimed that twenty-one-year-old Daniel Buckley disguised himself as a woman in order to sneak aboard a lifeboat. However, it may have been just a woman’s shawl that was thrown over his head after he got on the boat with a small group of men. When ship’s officers came to the lifeboat and ordered the men to get out, a woman in the boat covered Buckley to prevent him from losing his seat. The shawl was not a disguise, and Buckley was not in a dress. That was his testimony, anyway, in an American inquiry.

First class passengers on the first lifeboat to be lowered refused to turn back to pick up people who were drowning, though there was space for many others to have been saved. They feared being overturned by people trying to scramble over the sides as well as the chance that they might be pulled into the deep behind the
Titanic
. Mrs. Rosa Abbott, the only woman to go down with the ship and survive, said a man tried to climb up on her back as they floundered in the water, forcing her down under the water and nearly drowning her.

Mr. Bruce Ismay, part owner of the
Titanic
and a managing director of the White Star Company, was the man responsible for not putting enough lifeboats on board the ship. He became the most infamous seaman since Captain Bligh. It was reported that without regard for the hundreds of women waiting on the doomed ship, he crawled into a lifeboat to save himself. However, while he did end up escaping death by securing a seat for himself on a half-filled lifeboat that was being lowered into the water, it was only after he had helped fill several other boats with women, and no other passengers were in the immediate vicinity to fill the remaining empty seats.

Captain Smith ordered his men to “do your best for the women and children and look out for yourselves.” At the same time, John Harper was ordering men to do their best for the women and children and to look out for
others
.

AN UNWAVERING AMBITION

As the monstrous iceberg ripped the ambitions of others to shreds, Harper demonstrated his unwavering ambition that even death could not affect. He declared Jesus Christ as man’s hope to the end. His character was a stark contrast to others who were forced to face the folly of their ambitions.

Michel Navratil Sr., the father of Michel Jr. and Edmond, had taken the two little boys aboard the
Titanic
for a one-way trip to America, leaving behind the wife and mother whom he had discovered was having an affair. Taking on the assumed name of Louis M. Hoffman and calling his sons Lolo and Momon, his only goal had been to abduct his children from their mother and prevent her from finding them. However, facing his own death, he put his sons aboard a lifeboat, knowing that they would be returned to their mother. In fact, according to Michel, who was four years old at the time, his father’s last words to the boys were: “when your mother comes for you …tell her that I loved her dearly and still do.” He was thirty-two years old. (The boys, known as the “
Titanic
waifs,” were indeed reunited with their mother a month later when she traveled from France to New York to claim them. Mr. Navratil’s body was recovered from the Atlantic and buried in Canada.)

John “Jack” Phillips, a self-sufficient crew member, told the
SS Californian
to “shut up” after they radioed their sixth warning of icebergs in the path of the
Titanic
. (Previous warnings had already been passed along to the captain.) Facing death, his ambitious independence disappeared as he cried out, “God forgive me … God forgive me!” He was twenty-five years old.

Thomas Andrews, the designer of the
Titanic,
spent the closing moments of his life in the smoking-room, looking at a mural on the wall. “The New World to Come” was the mural’s caption. The man’s life jacket was laid to one side, signifying the end of what had been a beautiful dream on the part of the designer, the ship’s owners, and the public. He was thirty-nine years old, married, and the father of one child.

Mrs. Isidor Straus, whose husband owned Macy’s Department Store, did not get into a lifeboat. She said to her husband, “Where you go, I go.” She helped her maid into boat number eight and put her fur coat on her shoulders, telling her, “Keep warm. I won’t be needing it.” The Strauses were in their sixties. (Mr. Straus’ body was recovered, but his wife’s was not.)

American businessman Benjamin Guggenheim and his valet, Victor Giglio, appeared on deck in full evening dress, saying, “We’ve dressed in our best and are prepared to go down like gentlemen.” Mr. Guggenheim is reported to have dictated a message for his wife that said, “If anything should happen to me, tell my wife in New York that I’ve done my best in doing my duty.” He was forty-six years old and, ironically—given the message sent—was traveling with his mistress, who survived and returned to Paris.

As the ship went down, the card sharks who sailed under assumed names and clipped the passengers for $30,000, stopped their cons. Gym instructor T.W. McCawley, who was teaching people to ride on mechanical horses and camels, stopped his lesson. The allure of four-postered beds, designer fireplaces, Turkish baths with gilded cooling rooms, and the first swimming pool ever built in an ocean liner ended. Passengers in the first-class lounge ceased their partying and paraded onto the deck with lifebelts over their evening dress. The business deals stopped. The idle chatter of the socialites died away. But, with his last breath, John Harper tirelessly continued his life’s work of urging men to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

HARPER KNEW WELL THE TERRORS OF DROWNING

Harper’s courage did not come from ignorance. Probably no one else on the
Titanic
was as familiar with the terrors of drowning as John Harper. At age two and a half, he had fallen into a well and was resuscitated just in time by his mother. At twenty-six, Harper was swept out to sea by a reverse current and barely survived. At thirty-two, he faced death on a leaking ship in the Mediterranean. Perhaps it was God’s way of testing this servant for his last warning mission on the
Titanic
.

Harper already knew what hundreds discovered on that tragic night: drowning is a horrible death. William Murdoch, the
Titanic
’s first officer, worked to move women and children into the lifeboats. Then, apparently unable to face a slow demise in the water, it is reported that he committed suicide by shooting himself as the bridge of the ship slipped below the surface of the Atlantic. (He was thirty-nine years old; his body was lost at sea.) Many of the men, women, and children who were left on the sinking ship screamed their way toward a dreadful silence. In contrast, a confident John Harper faced death with absolute assurance that Jesus had conquered death and given him the gift of eternal life. This assurance overcame the terror of drowning.

THE PASSION OF HIS ENTIRE LIFE

Harper’s heroism was not just one shining moment in an otherwise unheroic existence. He burned, wept, prayed, and worked unselfishly for others throughout his entire life. Harper reclaimed drunkards, gamblers, and former prize fighters for the Lord. As a pastor, he would sometimes spend the entire night in his church praying for his hundreds of members by name. Harper worked day and night, in homes and on the streets, pointing the downtrodden to a better life. He labored ceaselessly among the common people, seeking to care for them.

Harper’s tiresome labors were done in spite of bad health. In the summer of 1905, illness stopped him for six months, broke his health, and stole his rich, resonant voice. His body was never the same, remaining a skeleton of the man he had been. Harper’s sallow complexion, fragile frame, and repeated illnesses were the marks of one who refused to stop for rest. Yet, despite ill health and a weary body, Harper was bright and joyful. This diligent servant was said to have “gloried in his weakness.” The night before the
Titanic
sank, while others played and rested, John Harper was seen on the ship deck earnestly seeking to lead a young man to faith in Christ.

HARPER HAD AN OPPORTUNITY
TO ESCAPE THE TITANIC

John Harper’s heroics on the
Titanic
take on an added dimension when you consider his opportunity to avoid the ill-fated ship. Harper was originally scheduled to sail on the
Lusitania
to preach in Chicago’s Moody Memorial Church. In 1911, he had had the best meetings since the days of the great D. L. Moody, and the church had invited him back for three months of meetings. Instead of taking the
Lusitania
, he got up and informed the men at the Seaman’s Center Mission in Glasgow that the schedule had been changed and he was leaving instead on the
Titanic
.

Mr. Robert English stood up in a meeting at the Seaman’s Center and begged Harper not to make the trip to Chicago. English told Harper he had been in prayer and had an ominous impression that disaster awaited him if he took his voyage. He offered to pay for Harper’s ticket if he would delay his voyage. Several others have attested to the fact that English pled with Harper; these include Willie Burns, who was present at the Glasgow meeting, and English’s two granddaughters, Mary Whitelaw and Georgina Smith, both members of the Harper Memorial Church (formerly known as the Paisley Road Baptist Church).

English’s words were strikingly similar to those spoken to the Apostle Paul by a prophet named Agabus 1,900 years earlier. Agabus tied his own hands and feet with Paul’s belt and prophesied, saying, “So shall the Jews at Jerusalem bind the man that owneth this girdle and shall deliver him into the hands of the Gentiles.” Harper’s refusal to turn back was much like Paul’s response: “What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:10-13). Both Paul and Harper had a sense of divine purpose regarding their trips, and both were willing to die to carry out that purpose.