1 HE WAS a true hero of the Titanic disaster in April 1912, but few people outside Kinning Park, where he preached, know the story of the Reverend John Harper. The Glasgow minister was the son of a draper, born in Houston in Renfrewshire. When he was 14, he left school and worked in a paper mill.

2 In 1890, he started preaching and became pastor of the Paisley Road Baptist Church where the congregation grew from 25 to more than 500 during the 13 years he spent there. (It is now the Harper Memorial Baptist Church.)

3 John married Annie Bell in April 1903, and three years later their daughter Nan was born. However, Annie died just seven days later, and was laid to rest in Craigton Cemetery. Shortly after her death, Reverend Harper set sail for Chicago to preach at the Moody Church. He had originally planned to sail to New York on the Lusitania , but, delayed by a change in arrangements, travelled on the Titanic instead with his daughter, now six, and grown-up niece Jessie Leitch.

Glasgow Times:

4 When the ship hit the iceberg, Reverend Harper kissed his daughter goodbye and handed her to a crewman who put her into lifeboat 11 with Jessie. Then he went back into the ship. Survivor accounts tell how he tried to help other passengers, swimming towards people in the icy water, hoping to lead them to Christianity before they died.

It is said he even gave his own lifejacket to one man, who said he had not converted, saying: “Here then, you need this more than I do.”

5 the memorial stone for John’s wife Annie in Craigton cemetery reads: “Called to higher service from the deck of the ill-fated SS Titanic” which applies not to Annie, of course, but to John, a reminder of Glasgow’s connection to the most famous maritime tragedy in history.