from leaving the neutral port of New York. Four of Murray's Naval College classmates were sent to the Royal Navy cruiser , and were killed off the coast of South America on 1 November 1914 at the Battle of Coronel—becoming the first Canadian-service casualties of World War I. After was decommissioned in July 1915, Murray was promoted to Acting Sub-Lieutenant on 1 December 1915, and served briefly as Flotilla Gunnery Officer in , before being transferred as Lieutenant to on Canada's West Coast. This provided Murray with valuable experience on Canada's Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and on three of Canada's six ships in the early years of World War I. He spent the last two years of World War I as Assistant Navigating Officer in , from January 1917 as Lieutenant, where he set up troop convoys across the Atlantic to outwit German U-boats. This proved to be invaluable experience for the Battle of the Atlantic more than 20 years later. Murray ended World War I in the North Sea aboard , and witnessed the surrender of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. Between the wars After World War I, Murray served briefly in , and then in the newly commissioned under the distinguished British Captain Percy Noble, from whom Murray learned the basic skills of command, and who eighteen years later served opposite Murray on the receiving end of the convoys as Commander-in-Chief, Western Approaches Command. Following a short tour aboard , Murray was assigned to as Navigation Officer, until Aurora was decommissioned in July 1922 due to naval budget cuts. With the downsizing of the Royal Canadian Navy, and given his recent marriage to Jean Chaplin Scott in Westmount, Quebec on 10 October 1921, Murray considered a civilian career—and in 1924 qualified as master of a foreign-going vessel. In the end, however, Murray decided to remain with the armed forces, and he joined many of his colleagues alternating between shore assignments as a training officer with the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve, and serving aboard Royal Navy vessels. Thus it was that, as a Canadian, Murray served in (during a tour in 1923 in Turkey he befriended Lord Louis Mountbatten), and , where he served as Assistant to the Master of the Fleet. Understandably, this provided Murray and his peers, including Percy W. Nelles, with a distinct anglophile and Royal Navy bias. In January 1925, Murray was promoted