She commissioned on 15 September 1896 for service on the North America and West Indies Station, but was back in the United Kingdom a couple of years later.

[5] She was present at Chemulpo Bay in 1904, during the historical naval battle between two Russian ships, the cruiser Varyag and the gunboat Korietz against a fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Future Arctic explorers and members of Robert Falcon Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition Patrick Keohane and Edward Evans served aboard her.

In June she was the Senior Naval Officers' ship at Gaba Tepe, and during the Suvla landings she was the flagship of the 3rd Squadron.

In January 1917 she was at Kiswere (Tanzania), when the second period of German commerce raids began and in 1918 she was off the Cape of Good Hope.