The first HMS Zulu was a Tribal (or F-) class destroyer launched 16 September 1909 at Hawthorn Leslie Shipyard and commissioned in March 1910. She was mined during the First World War, on 27 October 1916 off Dover in a minefield lain by the Imperial German submarine UC-1. Her stern was blown off and sank, but the forward section remained afloat. It was towed into port and attached to the stern of , which had been torpedoed, to form a new destroyer named .
Construction and design
Zulu was one of five Tribal-class destroyers ordered by the British Admiralty in January 1908 under the 1907–1908 shipbuilding programme for the Royal Navy. The Tribal-class destroyers were to be powered by steam turbines and use oil-fuel rather than coal, and be capable of , but detailed design was left to the builders, which meant that individual ships of the class differed greatly.
Zulu was long overall and between perpendiculars, with a beam of and a draught of . Normal displacement was , with deep load displacement . Six Yarrow boilers fed steam to Parsons steam turbines, giving and driving three propeller shafts. The main high-pressure turbine drove the centre shaft, with the outer shafts being fitted with low-pressure turbines, together with cruise and astern turbines. The outtakes from the boilers were fed to four funnels. Range was at .
Gun armament consisted of two guns, with two torpedo tubes comprising the ship's torpedo armament. After successful sea trials in December 1909, Zulu was commissioned on 19 March 1910. based at Portsmouth. In October that year, the Tribals were officially designated the F class, and as such the letter "F" was painted on the bows of the class. In February 1914, the Tribals (including Zulu), whose range was too short for effective open sea operations, were sent to Dover, forming the 6th Destroyer Flotilla. Zulu captured the German sailing ship Perhns on 5 August 1914, and collided with sister ship in both August and September that year. In total, 1,565 mines were laid by the minelayers Princess Margaret, Orvietto, Paris and Biarritz. The minefield probably caused the loss of one U-Boat, , although at the time it was thought that four or five German submarines had been sunk. The destroyer was badly damaged by shellfire from German coast-defence batteries, while one drifter, Clover Bank, was sunk by a mine.
On 8 November 1916, Zulu was sailing from Dover to Dunkirk when she struck a mine, laid by , that exploded under the ship's engine-room. Three men were killed, and the ships stern broke off and sunk. Zulu was towed to safety in Calais by the French destroyer .
It was decided to join the front end of Zulu with the stern of Nubian, another Tribal-class destroyer that had had her bows blown off by a torpedo during the Battle of Dover Strait on the night of 26/27 October 1916. Although these ships were not of identical design, the two sections were joined at Chatham Dockyard to produce a new destroyer, that commissioned on 7 June 1917.
!Date
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|H86||1914
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|D10||September 1915
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