HMS Tilbury (1918)

HMS Tilbury was a S-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that served during the First World War.

The boat badge is in the shape of a boar and is in the collection of the National Maritime Museum.

Design and construction
The S-class were intended as a fast (36 knots destroyer for service that would be cheaper than the large V-class destroyers that preceded them and so able to be ordered in large numbers. The ships were 276 ft long overall and 265 ft between perpendiculars, with a beam of 26 ft and a draught of 9 ft. They displaced 1000 LT normal and 1220 LT deep load. Three Yarrow boilers fed Parsons geared steam turbines which drove two propeller shafts, and generated 27000 shp, giving the required 36 knot speed.

The design gun armament of the S-class was three 4 in guns and a single 2-pounder (40 mm) "pom-pom" anti-aircraft gun. Torpedo armament was four 21 in torpedo tubes in two twin rotating mounts on the ships' centreline and two 18 in tubes at the break of the forecastle for easily aimed snap-shots in close action. The ship had a crew of 90 officers and men.

On 23 June 1917, the Admiralty placed an order for 36 S-class destroyers under the Twelfth War Programme as a follow-on to the 33 S-class destroyers ordered in May that year under the Eleventh War Programme. Tilbury, one of three S-class destroyers ordered from Swan Hunter in the Twelfth War Programme, was laid down at their Wallsend shipyard in November 1917. She was launched on 17 June 1918 and completed on 17 September 1918.

Service
On commission, Tilbury was sent to the Mediterranean, and was at Mudros in the Aegean Sea at the end of the war. Tilbury continued as part of the Sixth Destroyer Flotilla in the Mediterranean Fleet through 1919. The Royal Navy had a surplus of modern destroyers following the First World War, and by October 1920, Tilbury was listed as in reserve at the Nore. In 1923, she was in reserve at Portsmouth and in June 1928 was in Maintenance Reserve at Rosyth.

Tilbury was sold to the shipbreakers Ward in February 1931 for scrapping at their Llanelly yard.