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World War II-dated menu and program for the luncheon held at London’s Guildhall on February 23, 1940, honoring the officers and men of HMS Ajax and HMS Exeter for their victory over the German warship Admiral Graf Spee at the Battle of the River Plate, 4.5 x 7, signed on the front cover in fountain pen by Winston Churchill (“W. S. Churchill”). In fine condition, with light wear, soiling, and scattered stains. Housed in a custom cloth-bound presentation case.
Fought on December 13, 1939, the Battle of the River Plate was the first major naval engagement of the war. A British squadron under Commodore Henry Harwood, made up of the cruisers HMS Exeter, HMS Ajax, and HMS Achilles, engaged the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee off the coast of South America and forced her to seek refuge at Montevideo; her captain scuttled her in the River Plate estuary on December 17. Achilles, which served with the New Zealand Division, was not represented at the Guildhall, as she arrived home in Auckland on the day of the luncheon. In London, 760 officers and men from Exeter and Ajax marched from Waterloo station to Horse Guards Parade, where they were inspected by King George VI, before proceeding to the Guildhall for a civic luncheon.
Then serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill addressed them in his speech known as ‘The Navy Is Here.’ He linked their victory to a rescue just a week earlier. On February 16, a boarding party from the destroyer HMS Cossack had freed 299 prisoners from the German supply ship Altmark in a Norwegian fjord. The Altmark had served as the Graf Spee’s auxiliary and a floating prison for the crews of British merchant ships the raider had sunk, and when the boarders reached the captives, the cry went up: ‘The Navy is here.’ Churchill closed his address by pairing Nelson’s signal at Trafalgar, ‘England expects that every man will do his duty,’ with what he called ‘last week’s not less proud reply’: ‘The Navy is here.’ Less than three months after the luncheon, on May 10, 1940, Churchill became Prime Minister.
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