Born the second of the five sons of the artist Augustus John (1878–1961) and his first wife, Ida John (née Nettleship), John was raised with his siblings in an undisciplined manner, frequently dressing as ragamuffins, to such an extent that his maternal grandmother attempted to secure and raise them herself. At the age of nine, he went with his brothers to Dane Court preparatory school in Parkstone, Dorset. There he won the prize for the best gentleman in the school and a copy of Jane's Fighting Ships, and it was this, together with a wish to seek a more orderly existence, that inspired him to join the Royal Navy. His father strenuously objected, but his stepmother help persuade him to support his son. In 1916 he entered the Royal Naval College, Osborne on the Isle of Wight, at the age of thirteen. He transferred to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth in 1917 and passed out eighty-third of a hundred in 1920. John is remembered at Dartmouth by the naming of the college's theatre and lecture hall, the Caspar John Hall, affectionately known as 'CJH'.
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