At dawn on 13 December 1939, off the estuary of the River Plate between Uruguay and Argentina, the German raider Admiral Graf Spee ran into three British cruisers: Exeter, Ajax and the New Zealand manned Achilles. In a running fight the Germans wrecked Exeter, but Graf Spee was hit too and took refuge in neutral Montevideo. On 17 December her crew scuttled her in the estuary.
Hunting the raider
Since the start of the war Graf Spee had been sinking merchant ships in the Indian Ocean and off South Africa, and when she was thought to be heading for South America and the River Plate, the Royal Navy's South American cruiser squadron under Commodore Henry Harwood went to meet her. Harwood had the heavy cruiser Exeter with six 8-inch guns and the light cruisers Ajax and Achilles with eight 6-inch guns each; his fourth cruiser, Cumberland, was under repair in the Falklands. Graf Spee carried six 11-inch and eight 5.9-inch guns, which outranged the British, although the cruisers were faster.1
Harwood's standing policy, quoted by the National Museum of the Royal New Zealand Navy, was to attack a pocket battleship at once, by day or night, with three cruisers in company. He split his ships into two divisions so that the German would have to divide its fire.2
The battle
Exeter was sent to investigate smoke at 6:14 a.m., some 150 miles east of the estuary, and minutes later reported a pocket battleship; Graf Spee opened fire at once. Captain Hans Langsdorff turned his heavy guns on Exeter, which was hit again and again until all her guns were out of action, and she had to break off and make for the Falklands to repair. Ajax had two turrets knocked out and her topmast shot away.3
The British lost 61 men killed in Exeter, seven in Ajax and four in Achilles. In Achilles the dead were killed by splinters from an 11-inch shell that fell short and burst on the water. On the German side the HMS Exeter association gives 36 dead and 60 wounded, while the New Zealand navy museum gives 36 dead in one place, and 37 killed and 57 wounded in another, after some 23 hits. With the two light cruisers shadowing her, Graf Spee entered Montevideo shortly after midnight.4
Scuttled in the estuary
Uruguay allowed the damaged ship a stay of only 48 hours, according to the museum. Langsdorff, ordered by Berlin not to let the ship be interned, chose to destroy her. On 17 December Graf Spee steamed out into the estuary with a skeleton crew and was blown up and scuttled; the first charge went off at 7:54 p.m.. A crew member remembered Langsdorff saying that a thousand young men alive were worth more to him than a thousand dead heroes. The crew was interned in Argentina, and Langsdorff shot himself in a hotel room in Buenos Aires a few days later, lying on the ship's battle ensign.5
