HMS Violent (D57)

HMS Violent (D57) was a V-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service in World War I and was in commission from 1917 to 1937.

Construction and commissioning
Violent, the first Royal Navy ship of the name, was ordered in July 1916. She was laid down by Swan Hunter at Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, in November 1916 and launched on 1 September 1917. She was completed in November 1917.

Service history
Violent was assigned to the Grand Fleet or Harwich Force for the rest of World War I. On 19 July 1918, she participated in the history's first attack by aircraft launched from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, when she operated in the North Sea in support of a strike by Royal Air Force Sopwith 2F.1 Camel fighters from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious (47) against the Imperial German Navy Zeppelin dirigible sheds at Tondern, Germany (today Tønder, Denmark) in what became known as the Tondern Raid. Returning from the strike, Camel pilot Captain William F. Dickson, who had decided he would not be able to return to Furious, sighted Violent – the first British warship he encountered during his return flight – and circled her before ditching his aircraft in the sea. Violent recovered him, and he went on to become a Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Chief of the Air Staff, and Chief of the Defence Staff.

In 1921, Violent joined the light cruisers HMS Caledon (D53), HMS Castor (1915), HMS Cordelia (1914), and HMS Curacoa (D41) and the destroyers HMS Vanquisher (D54), HMS Vectis (D51), HMS Venetia (D53), HMS Viceroy (D91), HMS Viscount (D92), HMS Winchelsea (D46), and HMS Wolfhound (D56) in a Baltic cruise, departing the United Kingdom on 31 August 1921, crossing the North Sea and transiting the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to enter the Baltic. The ships called at Danzig in the Free City of Danzig; Memel in the Klaipėda Region; Liepāja, Latvia; and Riga, Latvia. The ships sighted a naval mine at the entrance to the harbor as they approached Tallinn, Estonia, on 17 September 1921, and Violent, ordered to sink it, detonated it with gunfire while the other ships waited to proceed. The ships then pulled into Tallinn for a port call and went on to visit Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; Gothenburg, Sweden; and Kristiania, Norway, before crossing the North Sea and ending the voyage at Port Edgar, Scotland, on 15 October 1921.

Final disposition
After World War I, the United Kingdom received the passenger liner SS Bismarck from Germany in 1920 as a war reparation, and she was sold to the White Star Line, later the Cunard White Star Line, in which she served as RMS Majestic. In 1936, Cunard White Star retired Majestic and sold her to Thomas W. Ward for scrapping, but because of legal requirements imposed under the agreement transferring Majestic to the United Kingdom as a war prize, the British government instead took control of Majestic and assigned her to the Royal Navy. To pay Thomas W. Ward for Majestic, the Royal Navy agreed to transfer 24 old destroyers with a combined scrap value equivalent to that of Majestic to Thomas W. Ward for scrapping. Violent was among these, and her transfer to Thomas W. Ward took place on 8 March 1937. She was scrapped at Inverkeithing, Scotland.