HMS Diana was an Eclipse-class protected cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the mid-1890s.

The following year, she was commissioned with the complement of 450 officers and men at Chatham on 15 January 1901 to join the Mediterranean Fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Murray Farquhar.

[3][4] In March 1901 she was one of two cruisers to escort HMS Ophir, commissioned as royal yacht for the World tour of the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York (later King George V and Queen Mary), from Gibraltar to Malta, and then to Port Said.

[5] Captain Edmond Slade was appointed in command in April 1902, but Farquhar did not leave the ship until early June.

[9] In late 1904 she was sent to Tangier to watch the Russian fleet that was coaling there in the aftermath of the Dogger Bank incident.