Unlike the V-class ships, the W-class ships received triple-tube torpedo launchers and new main battery guns. After being commissioned, Wakeful started her service with the Grand Fleet. In 1918, the destroyer escorted German ships in Scapa Flow. The ship contributed to the capture of Soviet destroyers Spartak and Avtroil during the intervention of the British Fleet in Soviet Russia. Wakeful was lost on May 28, 1940, while evacuating soldiers from Dunkirk—the destroyer was sunk by two torpedoes from German schnellboot S-30.