THE URUGUAYAN government has proposed selling the famous bronze eagle and swastika recovered from the wreck of the German ’Panzerschiff,’Admiral Graf Spee,writesLauren Cantillon.
The proposal is that its sale will generate funds for the country’s military. The giant bronze eagle and swastika, weighing between 300 and 400 kilograms, has previously been estimated as having a value of up to £10 million.
The Graf Spee was scuttled by Captain Hans Langsdorff off Montevideo in December 1939 to prevent the Allies accessing stateof- the-art technology on board. The wreckage lay undisturbed until 2006 when a private expedition led to the eagle’s recovery from the seabed. Since then, the question of what to do with it has been a major source of contention - so much so that the eagle has been kept hidden inside a sealed crate in a Uruguayan Navy warehouse for over a decade.
The German ship, then one of the most advanced in the world, had been attacking merchant shipping in the South Atlantic with relative impunity following the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939. During this period, it is estimated that Graf Spee sank 450,000 tonnes of shipping. The Royal Navy successfully a…
