Obituary: Capt Ralph Medley

RALPH MEDLEY'S part in the destruction of Graf Spee, the German pocket battle-ship, off Montevideo in December 1939 might well have seemed the high peak of his naval career. In fact he went on to play a notable part in the subsequent war at sea, in more northern waters.

He had entered the Royal Navy in 1920, via its colleges at Osborne and Dartmouth, as a 14-year-old cadet. He first went to sea, a midshipman under training, in the old Benbow. As a Lieutenant (1928-36), he had two appointments on the China station and one in the Home Fleet destroyer Crusader. He was promoted Lieutenant-Commander in April 1937; his first commands were the old destroyer Stronghold and then the newer Beagle, not yet 10 years old.

In 1939 Medley was appointed Staff Officer, Intelligence to Commodore Henry Harwood, flying his pennant in the heavy cruiser Exeter, commanding Force G, the South American division of the American and West Indies station. As uncertain as anyone else about the number and disposition of German raiders, who were certainly sinking ships up and down the Atlantic, but, imagining the possibility of a German demonstration off the Falklands to coincide with the anniversary of the action there on 8 December 1914, Harwood kept Exeter and her half-sister Cumberland at Stanley until he heard of the sinking of the SS Doric Star far to the north.

He wondered who had sunk her; he had always thought that a raider would inevitably be tempted eventually by the considerable South American trade, and, by a brilliant exercise of imagination, Harwood concentrated the bulk of his little squadron off the estuary of the River Plate. The New Zealand light cruiser Achilles came round from the Horn from the Pacific, her sister Ajax rejoined Exeter and the trio were exactly on station on 12 December 1939, 150 miles east of Montevideo.

Helped by Medley, Harwood calculated that if he was right, a raider would appear the next day, and the Graf Spee did exactly that. Her captain, H. Langsdorff, made the fatal error of trying to engage both the divisions into which Harwood had split his force, shifting target periodically. Despite her heavier armament and superior range-finders, which included a gunnery radar, Graf Spee disadvantaged herself. Exeter was so badly damaged that she had to break off the battle, but the aggression of the two light carriers sufficed to shepherd Graf Spee into internment and self-destruction. Medley, who summarised her handling as being "the only action which enabled us to beat her", was mentioned in despatches. Harwood was promoted.

Medley stayed in the South Atlantic for two years, serving in a prodigious succession of eight cruisers before coming Home in December 1941. Early in 1942 he took command of the Beagle again, now modernised by the substitution of additional depth-charge throwers for her two after-guns. That April she was in the escort for convoy QP11, homeward-bound from Murmansk with the cruiser Edinburgh and her legendary cargo of Russian gold.

In the afternoon of 1 May, the convoy was assaulted by three large, modern and powerful German destroyers. The escort, reduced to Amazon, Beverley, an old American transfer, Beagle and Bulldog, but commanded with calm confidence by Bulldog's captain Commander Maxwell Richmond, could only muster nine elderly 4.7in and 4in guns against 11 5.9in and 5in with modern range-finders. Seldom has so obvious an early victory been turned into such a disgraceful retreat. Five attacks by the German destroyers were repulsed. One convoy straggler was sunk. But the bold tactics of Richmond repelled time and again a clearly superior force. "I should hate to play poker with you" was the tribute from one of Richmond's captains; all were awarded the DSO.

In 1943 Medley was seconded to the Royal Canadian Navy as Senior Officer of C3 Escort Group with the rank of Commander. He worked himself up from command of the Burnham, through Saskatchewan to the newly commissioned Prince Rupert, a River class frigate. In the last, he led the sinking of the U-boat U575 off Cape Finisterre in March 1944. Medley's most memorable recollection was the sight of a convoy of 150 ships, in 15 columns of 10 ships each, behind a 10-mile front. He had only his Prince Rupert and five corvettes, but the million tons of cargo were all safely delivered.

He was recalled in 1944 to be Staff Officer Operations to two Commanders- in-Chief in the Mediterranean, John Cunningham and Algernon Willis, and in 1946, appointed OBE, he became the Drafting Commander at Portsmouth, then one of the three Home Ports for drafting purposes. He had been professionally rather dismayed by that appointment, but his misgivings were assuaged by his promotion to Captain in 1947, the command of Cardigan Bay and then in 1948 of the 4th Frigate Squadron in the Far East.

He came Home to two good dry jobs, Deputy Director of the Operations Division of the Naval Staff (1950-52) and senior Naval Directing Staff Officer of the Joint Services' College at Latimer (1952-54). His last appointment (1955) was in the rank of Commodore as Chief of Staff to a French admiral at Nato HQ. Medley retired from the Navy in 1957, after a career which saw so swift a change in its structure and deployment.

He had a congenial decade as Clerk to the Worshipful Company of Saddlers (1960-71), becoming something of a family genealogist and writer.

Ralph Cyril Medley, naval officer: born 2 October 1909; OBE 1946; married 1934 Letty Boyce (two daughters); died 23 July 1999.