Ships
- HMS Illustrious (87) Captain from 31 July 1945 · Relieved on 7 January 1947
William Derek Stephens was born on 5 March 1898, the son of W. J. Stephens of Hampstead, and joined the Royal Navy in January 1911. He was still in the training service when the First World War began. Made a midshipman on 2 August 1914, he went to the battleship Formidable. In the early hours of 1 January 1915, in the English Channel, the German submarine U-24 torpedoed Formidable and she sank. Most of her company were lost. Stephens survived, and he later wrote his own account of the night.
He next served in the battleship Neptune. Neptune was in action at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916, and he stayed in her until the autumn of 1917. On 15 October 1917 he was sent to the submarine school at Gosport. He had already been an acting sub-lieutenant from November 1916 and a sub-lieutenant from July 1917. He was promoted lieutenant on 15 October 1918.
He remained a submariner between the wars. His commands included the small boats H 28 in 1920–21 and R 10 in 1923–24, then L 20 from 1924, L 22 from 1928, and Pandora from 1931. He was promoted lieutenant-commander on 15 October 1926 and commander on 31 December 1931. On 31 December 1937 he was promoted captain.
In February 1938 he took charge of the Second Submarine Flotilla, with his headquarters first in the depot ship Lucia and, from May 1939, in Forth. He left that appointment at the beginning of 1940. On 25 February 1940 he joined the Admiralty as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence and served there into the early months of 1941.
On 6 February 1941 he became captain of the light cruiser Mauritius, and he kept her until 22 March 1943. From July 1943 until 12 July 1945 he was Director of the Trade Division at the Admiralty, the office concerned with the naval control and protection of merchant shipping. In August 1944 he received the Polish Order of Polonia Restituta. In 1946 the United States made him an Officer of the Legion of Merit for his years in the Trade Division. In 1947 the Netherlands appointed him a Commander of the Order of Orange-Nassau with swords.
His last seagoing appointment was the armoured aircraft carrier Illustrious, then serving with the British Pacific Fleet. He succeeded Charles Edward Lambe on 31 July 1945, in the closing weeks of the war against Japan. The fighting ended within a fortnight of his taking command, and he remained in Illustrious through the first year and a half of peace. He was relieved on 7 January 1947 and retired from the Royal Navy the next day. Stephens died on 25 July 1983, at the age of eighty-five.