There were two main trade routes in the South Atlantic. Probably the most important was the one that ran from Britain to South American ports, such as Rio, Buenos Aires or Montevideo. This carried a significant portion of Britain's meat and grain, as well as a majority of the corn imported to Britain. The other major route ran from Britain or West Africa to South Africa, and onwards to Australia or to ports in south-east Africa (especially for ships from Britain). This was generally a less-well frequented route, but was still significant. It was the easiest route to ship resources from the mines of Western Australia, as well as coffee, copper and corn from southern Africa.

Looking at Graf Spee's victims can be instructive as to the nature of these shipping routes. Her first victim, the cargo liner Clement, had just left Recife, and was bound for Bahia, another Brazilian port. Her next two victims were carrying cargo from Cape Town - the Newton Beech was carrying corn to Sierra Leone and the UK, while the Ashlea was carrying sugar to the same ports. Graf Spee captured three ships travelling from Australian ports. The Trevanion was carrying zinc ores, the Doric Star was carrying meat and wool (she had originally started in New Zealand, but had stopped at Sydney and Cape Town) and the Tairoa was carrying meat, wool and lead. Her last victim, the Streonshalh, was carrying grain from Montevideo to Freetown and then to London. Her two other victims were the Huntsman, carrying general cargo from East Africa and India, and the coastal tanker Africa Shell, which was moving along the coast of Mozambique.

These routes were generally much less frequented than the Mediterranean route. This map, showing the position of British ships on the 24th November 1937, demonstrates this well. It can clearly be seen that there are far more ships travelling the Mediterranean route, from the Persian Gulf, India, Malaysia, China and Australia, than there are travelling the Southern route. A simple illustration of this is that on that day, there were fewer ships travelling between Australia and Cape Town than there were in the Suez Canal area.