"The son of a banker, Derek Roy Reffell was born on October 6 1928 and educated at the Methodist Board of Education’s Culford School in Bury St Edmunds. He was strongly influenced by Culford, recalling later that the school set standards which stayed with him throughout his life, and helped and encouraged him when he set out to pass the exams and interview to join the Navy. He entered the naval college in 1942 at its wartime location at Eaton Hall in Cheshire and as a midshipman, still under training, he served in the Mediterranean in the cruiser Ajax. There in July 1947, while on the Palestine Patrol, he was eyewitness to the arrest of the President Warfield carrying more than 4,500 illegal immigrants from Marseilles to Haifa, attempting to run the British blockade, an incident which has entered Israeli history as Exodus 1947." Admiral Sir Derek Reffell, Controller of the Navy who deftly handled defence procurement
