Service
On completion, Exeter joined the 2nd Cruiser Squadron with the Atlantic Fleet, where she served between 1931 and 1935. In 1934 she was assigned to the America and West Indies Station and remained there, with a temporary deployment to the Mediterranean during the Abyssinian crisis of 1935 and 1936, until 1939.
At the outbreak of the Second World War, she formed part of the South American Division with Cumberland, under Commodore Henry Harwood. Together with the Leander class light cruisers Ajax and Achilles she engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee in the Battle of the River Plate on 13 December 1939, which culminated in the scuttling of the Admiral Graf Spee several days later. Exeter operated as a division on her own, Achilles and Ajax as the other, in order to split the fire of Graf Spee. Exeter was hit by seven 11-inch shells and several near misses caused significant splinter damage. Sixty-one of her crew were killed and another twenty-three wounded. All three 8-inch turrets were put out of action and her speed was reduced to 18 knots (33 km/h), forcing her to withdraw from battle. Exeter made for Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands for emergency repairs which took until January 1940, then returned to Devonport, escorted by the carrier Ark Royal, without assistance for full repairs and a modernisation refit between February 1940 and March 1941. On 10 March, 1941, during the repair and refit period, her commanding officer, Captain W.N.T. Beckett MVO DSC died at Saltash Hospital, from complications resulting from surgery related to injuries received earlier in his career. He died the day Exeter was due to be re-commissioned. His replacement was Captain Oliver Loudon Gordon.
On returning to the fleet in 1941 she was engaged on escort duty for Atlantic convoys, including the escort of convoy WS-8B to the Middle East during the Bismarck episode. After this, she went on to the Far East.
On the entry of the Empire of Japan into the war in December 1941, Exeter formed part of the ABDACOM naval force intended to defend the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) from Japanese invasion.
Read more about this topic: HMS Exeter (68)
Famous quotes containing the word service:
“The masochist: “I send my tormentor hurrying hither and thither in the service of my suffering and desire.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“But when with moving accents thou
Shalt constant faith and service vow,
Thy Celia shall receive those charms
With open ears, and with unfolded arms.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)