Taurus was one of two R-class destroyers ordered by the British Admiralty from Thornycroft in December 1915 as part of the Seventh War Construction Programme alongside sister ship Teazer.

[9] On 4 June 1917, Taurus was deployed as part of a large group of seven cruisers and twenty five destroyers to protect the monitors Erebus and Terror in their bombardment of the German held Belgian port of Ostend.

[10] On 16 October, the ship sailed as part of a force of thirty cruisers and fifty-four destroyers searching for a German fleet that had been misidentified as being of a substantial size, despite being in reality no more than no more than ten vessels.

[11] After the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended the war, the Royal Navy returned to a peacetime level of strength and both the number of ships and the amount of personnel in service needed to be reduced to save money.

[12] Taurus initially remained with the Tenth Destroyer Flotilla but was reduced to the Reserve Fleet at Devonport on 16 October 1919 as a tender to the depot ship Woolwich.

[15] On 26 July 1924, the vessel participated in a naval review in front of George V.[16] Soon afterwards, the however, the Royal Navy decided it needed to retire some of the older destroyers in the fleet to make way for newer and more capable ships.