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Ian Lachlan Mackay McGeoch was born on March 26 1914 in Helensburgh, where he was inspired to pursue a life at sea by messing about in boats on the Firth of Clyde. He was educated at Pangbourne, and entered the Royal Navy as a special entry cadet in 1931.

Alasdair Duncan McIntyre, CBE, BSc, DSc, FRSE, FIBiol, FRSA, was born in Helensburgh on the 17th November in 1926.

He was educated at Hermitage School, Helensburgh, and Glasgow University, graduating in 1949 with first class honours in zoology – a subject he had switched to in second year.

Peter Louis Meryon was born at Helensburgh on June 27 1920 and sent at 13 to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. He was the third generation of his family to serve in the Royal Navy.

Eunice Guthrie Murray was born on the 21st January 1878 at Moore Park, Cardross, the youngest daughter of three to David Murray, a Glasgow lawyer (who with David Maclay and John Spens founded the Glasgow law firm Maclay Murray and Spens), and Frances Porter Stoddard, the daughter of an American family living in Port Glasgow.

Ian Whitelaw Purvis was born on the 26th October 1922, in Lucknow, India, the son of Murray, a doctor in the Indian medical service and Hilda, who was born in The Grange, Suffolk Street, and the daughter of James Whitelaw Hamilton, a contemporary of the Glasgow Boys.

On returning to Scotland he attended Larchfield School before Glenalmond and Queens' College, Cambridge, where he read French and German before the war intervened.

Ian trained as an officer cadet before volunteering for the Indian Army, where he was commissioned into the 6th Gurkha Rifles (Queen Elizabeth's Own).