Ordered under the Naval Defence Act of 1889, which established the "Two-Power Standard", the class was contemporary with the first torpedo boat destroyers.

On 21 February 1897, she joined the British battleship HMS Revenge and torpedo gunboat HMS Harrier, the Russian battleship Imperator Aleksandr II, the Austro-Hungarian armored cruiser SMS Kaiserin und Königin Maria Theresia, and the German protected cruiser SMS Kaiserin Augusta in the International Squadron's first direct offensive action, a brief bombardment of Cretan insurgent positions on the heights east of Canea (now Chania) after the insurgents refused the squadron's order to take down a Greek flag they had raised.

On 14 January 1900 Dryad left Chatham for the Mediterranean in order to relieve Hussar, which returned to Devonport to pay off.

[6] In June 1902 she was lent to the East Indies Squadron for special service in the Gulf of Aden,[7] returning to Malta in late September.

In due course her name came to be used for the Navigation School itself, and then for HMS Dryad, the shore establishment at Southwick House in Hampshire.