HMS Orion was a Leander-class light cruiser which served with distinction in the Royal Navy during World War II.

Orion was commissioned on 18 January 1934, for service with the Home Fleet but she was transferred to the America and West Indies Station, based at the Royal Naval Dockyard on Ireland Island, in the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda, in 1937 where she was with the 8th Cruiser Squadron.

On the 27th of October, 1937, the Flag of the America and West Indies Station was transferred to Orion when HMS York was sent to Trinidad due to civil unrest there, leaving the Commander-in-Chief at Admiralty House, Bermuda.

As Apollo was undergoing a refit at the dockyard, it would have fallen to Orion to deliver MacDonald's body, but as flagship she could not leave the station.

Orion was tasked with the memorial service for MacDonald, whose body was taken aboard the Royal Navy tug Sandboy once the Reina del Pacifico was in Bermudian waters and landed on Front Street in the City of Hamilton along with the dockyard Chaplain, the Orion's Chaplain, an Honour Guard, sentries and coffin bearers.

MacDonald's coffin was borne on a gun carriage to the Church of England's Cathedral of the Most Holy Trinity, in a procession that included the ship's company of Orion and a detachment of the Sherwood Foresters (Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment), serving in the Bermuda Garrison and based at Prospect Camp.

Late in that month, she sank the small Greek freighter Ermioni which was ferrying supplies to the Italian-held Dodecanese islands.

In the course of an attack on a German convoy headed for Crete on 22 May, she was damaged in a duel with its escort, the Italian torpedo boat Lupo.