In October 1920 she, with the other three British vessels, was sent to assure protection of the unloading of munitions intended for
Poland, at
Danzig. In 1931 she provided assistance to the town of
Napier, New Zealand, after the strong
Hawkes Bay earthquake, in a task force with the
sloop and the cruiser .
Second World War Early in the
Second World War,
Dunedin was involved in the hunt for the German battleships and after the sinking of the
armed merchant cruiser . In early 1940
Dunedin was operating in the
Caribbean Sea, and there she intercepted the German merchant ship
Heidelberg west of the
Windward Passage.
Heidelbergs crew scuttled the ship before
Dunedin could take her. A few days later,
Dunedin, in company with the Canadian destroyer , intercepted and captured the German merchant ship
Hannover near
Jamaica.
Hannover later became the first British
escort carrier, . Between July and November,
Dunedin, together with the cruiser , maintained a blockade off
Martinique, in part to bottle up three French warships, including the aircraft carrier . On 15 June 1941,
Dunedin captured the German tanker
Lothringen and gathered some highly classified
Enigma cipher machines 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
Saint Paul's Rocks, and finally, ''D'Entrecasteaux''.
Dunedin was part of the escort of
Convoy WS 5A when it was attacked by the German
heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper on 25 December 1940. The attack was repulsed by other ships of the escort, without losses to the convoy.
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 sank her. Only four officers and 63 men survived out of
Dunedins crew of 486 officers and men. == Citations ==