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Pathfinder spent the early part of her career with the Royal Navy Atlantic Fleet, before being transferred to the Channel Fleet, and then to the Home Fleet. As the opening shots of World War I were fired, she was attached to the 8th Destroyer Flotilla, based at Rosyth in the Firth of Forth.

Great Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, and Germany quickly scored some notable successes against Royal Navy warships with the laying of sea mines. HMS Amphion, one of the second Active-class group of improved scout cruisers, was sunk by a mine laid by the German auxiliary minelayer SMS Königin Luise, just two days into the war on 6 August 1914, off the Thames Estuary. The mine broke Amphion’s back and caused her forward magazine to explode with the loss of 132 crew. On 3 September 1914, the old torpedo gunboat HMS Speedy, built in 1893, and now converted into a minesweeper, hit a mine and sank in the North Sea, 30 miles off the Humber, whilst attempting to assist the minesweeper HMS Linsdell, a victim of the same minefield. But although there were losses to mines in the first month of the war, there had been no loss to a torpedo, and the Royal Navy did not fully understand, or accept, the threat to surface vessels from submarines.