Anniversary of Napier Earthquake - HMS Dunedin

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HMS Dunedin

 HMS Diomede and HMS Dunedin, were dispatched from Auckland that afternoon with food, tents, medicine, blankets, and a team of doctors and nurses. The cruisers sailed at high speed overnight, arrived on 4 February and provided valuable assistance in all areas until their departure on 11 February.

HMS Dunedin was a Danae-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy. She was launched from the yards of Armstrong Whitworth,Newcastle-on-Tyne on 19 November 1918 and commissioned on 13 September 1919. She has been the only ship of the Royal Navy to bear the name Dunedin.

In 1931 she provided assistance to the town of Napier, New Zealand, after the strong Hawkes Bay earthquake, in a task force with HMSVeronica and HMS Diomede.

Early in the Second World War, HMS Dunedin was involved in the hunt for the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after the sinking of the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi.

In early 1940 Dunedin was operating in the Caribbean Sea, and there she intercepted the German merchant ship Heidelberg west of theWindward Passage. Heidelberg's crew scuttled her before theDunedin could take her. A few days later, Dunedin, in company with the Canadian destroyer HMCS Assiniboine, intercepted and captured the German merchant ship Hannover near Jamaica. Hannover later became the first British escort carrier, HMS Audacity. Between July and November, the Dunedin, together with HMS Trinidad, maintained a blockade off Martinique, in part to bottle up three French warships, including the aircraft carrier Bearn.

On 15 June 1941, HMS Dunedin captured the German tankerLothringen and gathered some highly classified Enigma ciphermachines that she carried. The Royal Navy reused Lothringen as the fleet oiler Empire Salvage. Dunedin went on to capture three Vichy French vessels, Ville de Rouen off Natal, the merchant ship Ville de Tamatave east of the St. Paul's Rocks, and finally, D'Entrecasteaux.

HMS Dunedin was still steaming in the Central Atlantic Ocean, just east of the St. Paul's Rocks, north east of Recife, Brazil, when on 24 November 1941, at 1526 hours, two torpedoes from the German submarine U-124 sank her. Only four officers and 63 men survived out of Dunedin's crew of 486 officers and men.