Sheffield-class Type 42 Batch 2 Destroyer
HMS Exeter (D86) was the fifth ship of the Royal Navy to be named Exeter, after the city of Exeter in Devon. She was commissioned on 19 September 1980. She fought in the Falklands War and the first Gulf War, she was scrapped in 2009. The cruiser HMS Exeter was the second and last York-class heavy cruiser built for the Royal Navy during the late 1920s. Aside from a temporary deployment with the Mediterranean Fleet during the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–36, she spent the bulk of the 1930s assigned to the Atlantic Fleet or the North America and West Indies Station. When World War II began in September 1939, the ship was assigned to patrol South American waters against German commerce raiders. Exeter was one of three British cruisers that fought the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee later that year in the Battle of the River Plate. She was extensively damaged during the battle and was under repair for over a year. The original painting was donated as a prize for the HMS Exeter Association in 2016.