WThis is a list of torpedo boat classes of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, organised chronologically by entry into service. This article's coverage is restricted to the steam-powered torpedo boats built for or acquired by the British Navy between 1875 and 1905; the final batch of 36 steam-powered torpedo boats from 1906 to 1908 were originally rated as coastal destroyers and will be found under Cricket-class destroyers, while later torpedo boats powered by internal combustion engines will be found under Motor Torpedo Boats
WThe Brave-class fast patrol boats were a class of two gas turbine motor torpedo boats (MTBs) that were the last of their type for the Royal Navy (RN) Coastal Forces division. They formed the basis for a series of simpler boats which were widely built for export.
WHMS Lightning was a torpedo boat, built by John Thornycroft at Church Wharf in Chiswick for the Royal Navy, which entered service in 1876 and was the first seagoing vessel to be armed with self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes. She was later renamed Torpedo Boat No. 1.
WA motor torpedo boat is a fast torpedo boat, especially of the mid 20th century. The motor in the designation originally referred to their use of petrol engines, typically marinised aircraft engines or their derivatives, which distinguished them from other naval craft of the era, including other torpedo boats, that used steam turbines or reciprocating steam engines. Later, diesel-powered torpedo boats appeared, in turn or retroactively referred to as "motor torpedo boats" for their internal combustion engines, as distinct from steam powered reciprocating or turbine propulsion.
WHMS Rattlesnake was a unique design of torpedo gunboat of the Royal Navy. A result of the Russian war scare of 1885, she was designed by Nathaniel Barnaby that year and built by Laird Brothers, of Birkenhead. Quickly made obsolete by the new torpedo boat destroyers, she became an experimental submarine target ship in 1906, and was sold in 1910.
WThe TB 114-class was a class of four 160-foot torpedo boats built for the British Royal Navy in 1903–1905 by the shipbuilder J. Samuel White. All four ships served in local defence flotillas during the First World War, with one of the ships being sunk in 1918. The remaining three ships were withdrawn from use after the end of the war, with the last of the class sold for scrap in 1921.
WThe Z-class torpedo boats were a class of twelve warships that served in the Dutch Koninklijke Marine, German Kaiserliche Marine, Polish Marynarka Wojenna and British Royal Navy. The Royal Netherlands Navy ordered eight Z-class torpedo boats before the outbreak of World War I, four were to be built by the German shipbuilder AG Vulcan Stettin, to be named Z 1 to Z 4, while four others were to be built in the Netherlands; Z 5 to Z 8. After the outbreak of World War I the four ships under construction in Germany where requisitioned for service in the German navy, resulting in the Dutch Navy to order another four ships to be built in the Netherlands. The ships saw action during both World War I and World War II. One of the German ships was lost in World War I, while one Polish and one Dutch ship sank during World War II. Another Polish torpedo boat sank in peacetime due to a boiler explosion.