HMS Sparrowhawk (1918)

HMS Sparrowhawk was an Admiralty S-class destroyer that served with the Royal Navy in the Russian Civil War. The S class was a development of the R class created during the First World War as a cheaper alternative to the V and W class. Launched in 1918 shortly before the Armistice, the ship was commissioned into the Fourteenth Destroyer Flotilla of the Grand Fleet. The ship joined the Mediterranean Fleet and sailed to Smyrna during the Russian Civil War. After the dissolution of the General Assembly of the Ottoman Empire during the Turkish War of Independence, the vessel sailed to Istanbul and stayed briefly in the city. After the London Naval Treaty of 1930, and the subsequent reduction in the Royal Navy's older destroyer force, Sparrowhawk was retired and, in 1931, sold to be broken up in Plymouth.