HMS Pincher was a coal-fired Beagle-class destroyer of the Royal Navy built by William Denny and Brothers and launched on 15 March 1910.

Pincher was one of sixteen Beagle-class destroyers ordered under the 1908–1909 construction programme for the Royal Navy, and the only one of the class from the Scottish shipbuilder William Denny and Brothers . The Beagles were intended as a smaller and slower follow on to the previous Tribal class, which would be affordable enough to be built in large numbers. The use of coal as a fuel was ordered to reduce costs. The Beagles were not built to a standard design, with detailed design being left to the builders of individual ships in accordance with a loose specification.

Pincher was 271 feet 9 inches (82.83 m) long, with a beam of 28 feet 6 inches (8.69 m) and a draught of 8 feet 6 inches (2.59 m). Displacement was 940 long tons (960 t) normal. Five Yarrow boilers fed Parsons steam turbines rated at 12,500 shaft horsepower (9,300 kW), driving three shafts and giving a design speed of 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph). During sea trials she reached a speed of 27.17 knots (50.32 km/h; 31.27 mph).

The class had a gun armament of one BL 4 inch naval gun Mk VIII on the ships forecastle, and three QF 12-pounder 12 cwt guns. Torpedo armament consisted of two 21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes, with one between the ship's funnels and the aft gun, and one right aft at the stern of the ship. Two spare torpedoes were carried. The ships had a crew of 96 officers and men.

Pincher was laid down on 20 May 1909 at Denny's Dumbarton shipyard as Yard number 878 was launched on 15 March 1910, and completed on 2 September 1910.

The Beagles joined the 1st and 2nd Destroyer Flotillas as they commissioned, but in 1912, a reorganisation of the Home Fleet resulted in the Beagle's forming the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla. Pincher remained part of the 3rd Flotilla in March 1913. In October 1913, the Beagles, including Pincher, were moved to the Mediterranean as the newly formed 5th Destroyer Flotilla.

Pincher was still part of the 5th Flotilla at the outbreak of the First World War. On the eve of war, the Mediterranean Fleet was deployed to find the German battlecruiser Goeben and cruiser Breslau. On the night of 5/6 August 1914, Pincher accompanied the battlecruisers Inflexible and Indefatigable and the cruisers Chatham and Weymouth as they patrolled west of Sicily, with Pincher putting into Bizerte on 6 August to coal and to take two captured German merchant ships, Kawak and Kalymnos into port.

In November 1914, as a response to a shortage of destroyers in home waters, Pincher was one of eight Beagle-class destroyers recalled to Britain, reaching Plymouth on 29 November, and being used to operate from Portsmouth, patrolling the routes used by cross-Channel transports. It had been planned to use the Beagles to equip a new Tenth Destroyer Flotilla based at Harwich, but the need for escorts for transports in the Channel led to these plans being abandoned, and the ships remained at Portsmouth.