HMS Devonshire was the lead ship of her class of six armoured cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century.

Upon mobilisation in mid-1914 her squadron was assigned to the Grand Fleet; Devonshire did not see combat before she was transferred to the Nore in 1916.

At the end of that year she was assigned to the North America and West Indies Station and spent the rest of the war escorting convoys.

She was powered by two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, which produced a total of 21,000 indicated horsepower (16,000 kW) and gave a maximum speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph).

[2] Her main armament consisted of four breech-loading (BL) 7.5-inch Mk I guns mounted in four single-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure and one on each side.

It spent much of its time with the Grand Fleet reinforcing the patrols near the Shetland and Faeroe Islands and the Norwegian coast[11] where Devonshire captured a German merchantman on 6 August.

Devonshire was assigned to the 7th Cruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet[12] before she was transferred to the Atlantic to protect Allied shipping in December,[14] based at the Royal Naval Dockyard in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda on the North America and West Indies Station.