Harper was born in New Zealand and educated there at
Christ's College. In 1888 he joined the Royal Navy, being promoted to
Lieutenant in 1896. He served in the
South African war from 1899 to 1900 and the
Ogaden Somali expedition from 1900 to 1901. In March 1902 he was appointed to serve at the
Aboukir, deployed at the
Mediterranean station. He was promoted to the rank of
Commander in 1906, and was navigating commander of the
Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert between 1911 and 1914. He became captain in 1913 and at the
Naval Review of July 1914 served as master of the fleet.
Battle of Jutland account He came to the attention of the public in the aftermath of the
Battle of Jutland; after
World War I was over, the Admiralty decided to commission an official account of the battle, and Harper was chosen to do this. The
Harper Record was commissioned by the
First Sea Lord,
Rosslyn Wemyss, and was completed during his term of office in 1919. Harper, who was
Director of Navigation, was to 'prepare a record, with plans, showing in chronological order what actually occurred in the battle'. The account was to be based solely on the written records available at the Admiralty, without commentary on the merits of what had taken place. An official report had by now been long expected by the public; questions had been asked in
Parliament about when it would be completed. The
First Lord,
Walter Long advised the
House of Commons of the United Kingdom on 29 October 1919 that the record would be printed once it was ready. It was not finally published until 1927, the matter being raised in the House 22 times during that time. Wemyss was replaced as
First Sea Lord by
David Beatty, who had commanded the detached
battle cruiser Fleet at Jutland. Beatty shortly sought to make alterations to the record, initially by ordering that despatches made by himself,
Scheer (the German commander) and
John Jellicoe (commanding the main British Fleet) be added, together with a list of all signals made during the battle. He also requested removal of a passage discussing the part of the battle which most concerned the battle cruisers, and other alterations which Harper conceded to be minor. Beatty's reason was that the logs kept during battle had been inaccurate and consequently charts drawn up from them did not accord with the recollections of officers who had been present. In particular, Beatty objected to the record showing his own ship performing a complete circular turn, and insisted instead that it had manoeuvered through two 180 degree turns in an 's' shape. Beatty went so far as to produce a chart showing the turn as he described, signed by him and dated 1916. Inspection of the chart showed the signature to be similar to the form he customarily used in 1920, rather than the different form he used in 1916, while other testimony supported the claim that the ship had indeed turned a full circle. Harper was unwilling to put his name to a document he could not agree with, unless ordered in writing to do so. The Admiralty intended to publish much of the original source material, which would be available to others to judge the accuracy of his work. Harper requested confirmation from
Chatfield of the instructions to alter the record and received orders from Beatty to include them, 'in accordance with Board decision'. However, Harper records that First Lord
Walter Long asked him what was causing delay in publication, and was then unaware that Beatty had ordered changes. Shortly afterward Beatty withdrew his objections and a final version was agreed for publication on 14 May 1920, though still containing alterations from the original. He was placed on the
retired list in February 1927, though promoted to
Vice Admiral in retirement in 1929. From 1934 to 1946 he was nautical assessor to the
House of Lords After his retirement, Harper published another account of the battle,
The truth about Jutland, in his own name. In this he commented about the battlecruiser engagement commanded by Beatty "it is an indisputable fact that, in the first phase of this battle, a British squadron, greatly superior in numbers and gun-power, not only failed to defeat a weaker enemy who made no effort to avoid action, but, in the space of 50 minutes suffered what can only be described as a partial defeat." Harper died 27 May 1949 and the funeral took place at All Saints' church,
Hawkhurst, Kent. His son, also John Harper, also became a commander in the Royal Navy. ==Filmography==