[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by I'm goin' down

I read a New York Times contemporaneous account of the encounter between three British warships and the Graf Spay in 1939 off the coast of Uraguay.

Contemporary account? That explains all the errors.

The British believed the Graf Spay, a pocket battleship [smaller than a battleship with the speed of cruiser and armed with battleship caliber guns],

KMS Graf Spee (not Spay - the ship was named for the WWI squadron commander Admiral Graf (Count) Maximilian von Spee, who led his squadron to beat British admiral Sir Christopher Craddock's squadron at the battle of Coronel, then was himself defeated and killed by admiral Sir Doveton Sturdee at the first battle of the Falklands. Spee's main ships were the original Scharnhorst and Gniesenau) was only called a 'Pocket Battleship' by the British press. The ship was in fact a WWI-style armored cruiser - not particularly large, or fast, or heavily armed. Her 28cm (11.1") guns weren't even battleship standard in 1914, let alone those of 1939.

was off the coast of Africa attacking British shipping. The Graf Spaf appeared in the morning and confronted three British battleships, including the Exeter, that were escorting a French passenger liner off the coast of South America. The passenger liner dropped back and the British ships engaged the Graf Spay.

I could be misremembering, but I don't recall the three British cruisers - not battleships by any means - escorting anything. I'm pretty sure Exeter, Ajax and Achilles were part a group that was actively hunting Graf Spee.

The battle raged all day. Damage to the Exeter forced it to drop out of the battle, but not before it had scored several hits on the Graf Spay, forcing the Graf Spay to run southwards towards Montevideo, Uraguay, a neutral country which potetially afforded it safe harbor. The British ships pursued. Late in the day, when the sun was setting (in the west, last time I looked!), the commander of one of the British battleships steered his ship into shallow waters at a point of land near the mouth of the River Platte. The rays of the setting sun shone off the hull of the Graf Spay, illumitating it as darkness was falling. The glint from the sun off the Graf Spay lit it up, providing British gunners an hour of additional firing time, while the gunners on the Graf Spay could not locate the British ship nestled against the darkening shore, plus their targetng was impaired by the glare of the setting sun. (What a brilliant tactic! No wonder the British Navy ruled the seas for centuries!) The Graf Spay limped up the River Platte into Montevideo, capital of neutral Uraguay. Sixty of its crew had been killed or injured. The British government issued an ultimatum the Uraguayan government -- surrender the Graf Spay or the British Navy will sink it in the harbor. The Graf Spay tried to breach the British blockade at the mouth of the River Platte but was turned back by canon fire from British guns. It's captain ordered and sunk it in the harbor at Montevideo approximately three days after it arrived.

Very little of the above has anything to do with any of the accounts that I've read. After Exeter's withdrawaly Ajax and Achilles did indeed shadow Graf Spee, but "glinting sun"? In fact the two British light cruisers got too close on a couple of occassions and were driven back by German gunfire, not the other way around.

The best book on the subject is still Dudley Pope's The Battle Of The River Plate.