Hugh Guerrier was a consultant surgeon in Torbay. He was born in Muswell Hill, London, on 2 January 1913, the only son of Arthur Philip Guerrier, a solicitor, and his wife, Hilda Gwendolene née Davies, whose father was a general practitioner. Hugh was educated at Cambridge House School, Margate, and

Roger Miles was born in Liverpool on 1 May 1915, the third child of Edwin Griffith Miles, a Presbyterian minister and Annie Miles, née Jones. Most of his childhood was spent in Felixstowe on the Suffolk coast where he developed his lifelong love of sailing and the sea. He was educated at Bradfield C