Admiral Graf Spee by Ivan Berryman  showing visible signs of her tangle with British cruisers at the Battle of the River Plate, the German pocket battleship Graf Spee slips into the neutral waters of the Montevideo roadstead for light repairs.  This was to be the last haven for the Graf Spee which was later scuttled at the harbour mouth, her commander Kapitan zur See Langsdorff believing a large British fleet to be waiting for attempted escape into the South Atlantic. The Graf Spee by Simon Atack With war but a few months old, the German pocket-battleship Graf Spee was roaming the South Atlantic trade routes sinking British merchant shipping with impunity. Within a few weeks, under the wily captain Hans Langsdorf, the battleship had sunk or captured merchantmen totalling over 50,000 tons, without loss of life to either side. Commodore Henry Harwood hunted Graf Spee down, his three Royal Navy cruisers engaging the battleship on 13th of December 1939, in what became the Battle of the River Plate. During the two hour engagement, in which two British cruisers were badly damaged, Graf Spee had also been hit, and put into the neutral port of Montevideo for repairs. Believing Harwoods force to be larger than it was, trapped in port, Langsdorf scuttled the great warship in the harbour. It was the Royal Navy's first major coup of the war.The painting shows Graf Spee making her way through a choppy cross-current as she leaves the German port of Wilhelmshaven for final trials just a few weeks before the outbreak of war in September 1939.