[3] Built by Hawthorn Leslie and Company at Tyneside, England, Champion was laid down on 9 March 1914, launched on 29 May 1915, and completed in December 1915.

Gearing increased overall engine efficiency, allowing a reduction in boiler and turbine size for a given force provided by the propellers, so the initial design reduced the boiler room size and dropped the nominal developed power from 40,000 shaft horsepower (shp) (29.8 megawatts/MW) to 37,500 shp (28 MW).

However, during construction modifications were made to again increase boiler capacity and add cruising turbines which returned to the nominal power output of the Caroline class ungeared ships.

She was assigned to the Grand Fleet upon completion, serving as the leader of the 13th Destroyer Flotilla through the end of World War I and until early 1919.

She was attached to the Signal School in 1928,[5] and was used as a testbed for the Royal Navy's first remote-power-control (RPC) gunnery systems that year.