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The 2,940-ton scout cruiser HMS Pathfinder – the first warship to be sunk by a torpedo fired by a submarine.

HMS Pathfinder was launched on 16 July 1904 at Cammell Laird’s yard in Birkenhead, on the River Mersey at Liverpool. (Cammell Laird is one of the most famous names in British shipping, and a massive, vibrant industrial firm today.) After fitting out afloat, Pathfinder was completed on 18 July 1905.

She was to be the lead ship of the Pathfinder class of four pairs of scout cruisers. Scout cruisers were smaller, faster and more lightly armed than armoured cruisers and light cruisers. They were intended to range far ahead of the fleet, as the name suggests, scouting for the enemy but not engaging heavier vessels. A second group of seven scout cruisers was ordered under the 1907–1910 government shipbuilding programmes; these would be more heavily armed. Scout cruisers were however an evolutionary dead end, and although all these ships served during World War I, they quickly became obsolete as faster and more heavily armed classes of destroyers and light cruisers were developed.