The alarm was sounded on September 30, 1939 when the freighter Clement was stopped and sunk by a German warship off the coast of Brazil. After being found by the aircraft from the raider the ship was stopped with a warning shot. The crew abandoned the ship and the Clement was sent to the bottom with the 11" guns of the raider.

The reports all stated that the raider was possibly the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer and that she was operating in the south Atlantic and was possibly on the way to the Caribbean. It was not for some time that the true identity of the raider was learned, it was in fact the Admiral Graf Spee and Clement was the first victim of the famous ship. During the attack one crewman was injured by gunfire and was treated on board Admiral Graf Spee, the remaining crewmen, less the master and Chief Engineer, were allowed to leave in lifeboats.

The master, Frederick Charles Pearce Harris, R.N.R. and Chief Engineer W. Bryant, were kept as prisoners, but later that day they were put aboard the Greek steamer Papalemos, which was stopped by Langsdorff and the Admiral Graf Spee. The master of the Papalemos, which was a neutral ship, made a verbal agreement with Hans Langsdorff, commanding officer of the Admiral Graf Spee, that he would not transmit any wireless signals alerting the Allies of the whereabouts of the German ship until he reached the Cape Verde Islands, this was in exchange for not sinking his ship. He kept this agreement and sent no signals and the Allies did not know what had happened until Papalemos arrived in the islands on Oct. 9.