HMS Cheerful was a 30-knot, three-funnel torpedo boat destroyer built by Hawthorn Leslie.

She was ordered by the Royal Navy under the 1896–1897 Naval Estimates, launched in 1898, and saw action during World War I.

She was completed and accepted by the Royal Navy in February 1900,[2][3] and passed into the Medway Fleet Reserve at Chatham.

After 30 September 1913, she was known as a C-class destroyer and had the letter ‘C’ painted on the hull below the bridge area and on either the fore or aft funnel.

[10] On 30 June 1917, while on patrol off the Shetland Islands, she struck a contact mine that had been laid by German submarine UC-33.