HMCS Tuna was a steam yacht that was converted into a Royal Canadian Navy torpedo boat.

In 1914 JKL "Jack" Ross bought her and transferred her to the Minister of Naval Service for Canada, who had her converted into a torpedo boat.

Her coal bunkers were too small for her to cross the North Atlantic entirely under her own power, so Vanderbilt had her towed as far as Bermuda.

[14] On 7 May, Tarantula was at anchor off Robert Jacob's shipyard on City Island, Bronx, being overhauled by a party of 32 men, when the lead-acid batteries for her electric lighting system exploded.

On 18 May 1904, Vanderbilt tried to use Tarantula to race the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad steamship Richard Peck in Long Island Sound.

[17] In June, Vanderbilt offered to sell Tarantula to the United States Department of the Navy, for research into turbine propulsion.

Niagara IV had triple-expansion reciprocating engines, but beat the turbine steamer by 3 minutes and 50 seconds.

[4][20] In February 1905, the Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club elected WK Vanderbilt, Jr as its Commodore.

[21] In 1905 Vanderbilt had had Tarantula's original Yarrow boilers removed, and replaced with new ones with twice the heating capacity and furnace grate area.

[22] On 9 May that year, Tarantula ran a set of sea trials over the Government course at Great Neck, on which she averaged 25 knots (46 km/h).

[30] On 21 July, Tarantula broke one of her propeller shafts and lost two of her screws after colliding with an unidentified submerged object between Point Judith Light and Beavertail Lighthouse.

[31][32] On 1 January 1909, WK Vanderbilt and guests left either Havana or Cárdenas (reports differ), Cuba aboard Tarantula for a fishing trip to Nuevitas.

[37] In August 1914, after the First World War began, the Canadian industrialist Jack Ross acquired the 1902 Tarantula from Lawley & Son.

The United States, being neutral, forbade the sale to any belligerent country in the war of any ship that could be adapted for naval use.

Ross sold her to the Canadian Naval Ministry for $1, and offered to buy her back at the end of the war if she were still functional.

[40] The yacht was armed with two 14 in (360 mm) torpedo tubes and one 3-pounder gun, and commissioned on 5 December 1914 as HMCS Tuna,[41] with the pennant number QW-2,[42] and Ross as her commanding officer.