As a result, the Thistle was given a two-masted sailing rig as a supplementary means of propulsion, along with a number of other anachronistic features such as a manual capstan to raise the anchor, and candles rather than light bulbs.

In 1905, she was at Simon's Bay to witness the arrival of Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet on their long, laborious voyage from the Baltic Sea to the Battle of Tsushima.

The Thistle was subsequently transferred to the China Station, where she was assigned to protect British imperial interests in the treaty ports along the Yangtze river, and was deployed 600 miles (970 km) inland at Hankou (now part of the Wuhan conurbation).

The early years of this assignment were relatively leisurely, and the Thistle's surgeon, Walter Perceval Yetts, acquired a deep admiration for Chinese civilization, which would lead him to become an important sinologist.

She now relied exclusively on her engines, and when the Great War broke out, Thistle and the other gunboats on the China Station were decommissioned to provide a crew for the old battleship HMS Triumph, which was now regarded as a more important military asset.

The machinery proved less problematic on the long treks across the Indian Ocean from Singapore to Colombo and from the Maldives to the Seychelles, but on both these stages, the ship was close to running out of coal by the time she reached her destination.

In September 1916, the Thistle participated in the amphibious campaign against German East Africa, providing inshore protection for landings at Dar es Salaam and elsewhere, and pushing through difficult channels to bring fire support to soldiers striking inland.

The port was supposedly defended by the Portuguese cruiser Adamastor, but the governor, Colonel Tómas de Sousa Rosas, was intent on using the ship to simply evacuate himself and his luggage, abandoning the harbour and its stockpiles and supply facilities to the German forces.

Commander Boyes resolved to stand and fight with the Thistle and her small crew, an action which shamed Sousa Rosas and Adamastor into holding their ground, thus dissuading the Germans from an attack.

The limited coal supply continued to be a problem, and on a visit to Liberia in 1920, the gunboat's crew had to obtain wood in Monrovia in to avoid running completely out of fuel.