HMS Laburnum was a Royal Navy Acacia-class sloop built by Charles Connell and Company, Scotstoun.

[2] On 4 September 1915, the passenger liner Hesperian was torpedoed without warning by the German submarine U-20 southwest of Queenstown (now called Cobh) in the south of Ireland with the loss of 32 lives.

[3][4][5] The sinking of the Hesperian, which occurred despite an assurance to US President Woodrow Wilson from the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg that no passenger liners would be sunk without warning, provoked protests from America that resulted in the submarine campaign against merchant shipping in British waters being suspended for several months.

Laburnum rescued 176 survivors of Mantola's passengers and crew (seven crewmen had been killed by a capsizing lifeboat) and tried to tow the steamship by the stern, but was unable to make headway.

She left Auckland on 1 February 1935 for Singapore, where she was paid off to become a drill and training ship for the Straits Settlement Naval Volunteer Reserve.

Her wreck was raised about 1946, and sunk off East Lagoon, Singapore, as part of an existing breakwater of old hulks, and finally removed and scrapped about 1967.