[1] She participated in the first engagement of the war, the Battle of Heligoland Bight, on 28 August 1914 grouped with five other Town cruisers under command of Commodore William Goodenough.
[3] After the German cruiser Mainz was heavily damaged and disabled, Goodenough ordered his ships to cease firing on her at 12:55 pm and a rescue operation was subsequently undertaken.
Small craft from Liverpool were deployed to retrieve crewmembers who had abandoned ship while Lurcher positioned alongside Mainz to transfer the remaining personnel on board.
[4] Liverpool detached from the main force at 7:45 pm to transport 86 embarked prisoners to Rosyth, including a son of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz.
[5] Two-months later, on 27 October, Liverpool was in the company of the battleship Audacious when the latter struck a mine during a morning exercise by the Grand Fleet off the coast of Ireland.
[7] In 1915, Liverpool was detached from the Grand Fleet and sent to patrol the coast of West Africa in support of a search for the armed merchant cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm.
With the Black Sea's accessibility restored and the Allies committed to intervention during the Russian Civil War, Liverpool was ordered to the region and engaged in operations supporting the White Army from November.
[1] On the 23rd, Liverpool and the French armoured cruiser Ernest Renan, escorted by two Australian destroyers, transported military delegations to the port of Novorossisk to establish contact with Russian General Denikin.