F. S. Bell F. S. Bell Captain Frederick Secker Bell CB (17 August 1897 – 23 November 1973) of the Royal Navy was the commander of during the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939. He was educated at Matfield Grange, a prep school in Kent, and then at the Royal Naval Colleges of Osborne and Dartmouth. He served afloat in the battleship at the Battle of Jutland, as First Lieutenant of the destroyer in the Reserve Fleet at Devonport, 1923–25, and as executive officer of from 1935–38 and was promoted captain on 31 December 1938. He took command of in August
HMS Lutine (1779) of the "Lutine" occurred during the Second Coalition of the French Revolutionary Wars, in which an Anglo-Russian army landed in the Batavian Republic (now the Netherlands), which had been occupied by the French since 1795. (The French had captured the Dutch fleet the previous year in a cavalry charge over the frozen polders.) Admiral Duncan had heavily defeated the Dutch fleet in 1797 at the Battle of Camperdown and the remainder of the Dutch fleet was captured on 30 August 1799 by the Duke of York. During this period "Lutine" served as an escort, guiding transports in and out of