HMS Curlew was a C-class light cruiser built for the Royal Navy during World War I.

The ship survived World War I to be sunk by German aircraft during the Norwegian Campaign in 1940.

The Ceres sub-class was redesigned to move one of the amidships guns to a superfiring position in front of the bridge to improve its arcs of fire.

Curlew was powered by two Parsons steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, which produced a total of 40,000 indicated horsepower (30,000 kW).

The turbines used steam generated by six Yarrow boilers which gave her a speed of about 29 knots (54 km/h; 33 mph).

[4] She was laid down by Vickers Limited on 21 August 1916, and launched on 5 July 1917, being commissioned into the navy on 14 December 1917.

During the 1920s, she served with the 8th Light Cruiser Squadron on the America and West Indies Station, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard, on Ireland Island in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda.

Calcutta was torn free of the wharf, with all forty hawsers that had tethered her snapping, when the windspeed reached 138 mph (the highest speed recorded before the storm destroyed the dockyard's anemometer) and was saved only by the most desperate actions of her crew and other personnel, including Sub-Lieutenants Stephen Roskill of Wistaria and Conrad Byron Alers-Hankey of Capetown, who swam to attach new lines to the oil wharf.

Both whalers and 3 Carley Floats lost") while she rode out the storm offshore, was instructed at 16:10 on the 22nd to attempt to make contact with HMS Valerian, which had signalled "Am hove-to 5 miles south of Gibb's Hill" at 08:30 (and which had already gone down at 13:00).

[10] The following day, 23 October, Capetown signalled that two men had been sighted on a raft at 31.59 North, 64.45 West.