HMS Gloucester was a Town-class light cruiser built for the Royal Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. The ship was initially assigned to the Home Fleet upon commissioning in 1910 and was transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1913. She was involved in the hunt for the German ships Goeben and Breslau after World War I began in August 1914. Gloucester was detailed several times during the war to search for German commerce raiders, but her only success was the capture of one supply ship in early 1915. She played a minor role in the Battle of Jutland in mid-1916 and then spent most of the rest of the war in the Adriatic Sea. The ship was placed in reserve in 1919 and was sold for scrap in 1921.

The Town class was a group of twenty-one light cruisers built for the Royal Navy (RN) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) of the first half of the 20th Century. These vessels were long-range cruisers, suitable for patrolling the vast expanse covered by the British Empire. These ships, initially rated as second class cruisers, were built to a series of designs, known as the Bristol, Weymouth, Chatham, Birmingham and Birkenhead classes – all having the names of British towns except for the RAN ships, which were named after Australian cities.