Hi,
In his book "The first Destroyers", David Lyon quotes official sources.
about first 27-knotters:
"
The outside of the vessel, deck dittings, funnels &c. should be painted black."
Mentioning the period when some ships has their turtle back painted grey instead of black:
Intructions describes application of grey to turtle back up to underside of fwd gun platform, grey too on hatchways & cowls for 2ft from deck, insides of smaller cows vermillon, "
remaining portion of weather work (ie parts of ship exposed to the weather) black"
According to his research, balck was also applied under waterline (quoting 1899 sources about Teazer, Wizard & Conflict).
He mentions alterations such as the covering of the forward gun platforn with corticene (1901 source). "...Their efforts to obtain bits of corticene to cover these platforms show how necessary they find it".
That's still a lot of black through...
I like these early destroyers a lot and for painting decks I took inspiration on the model of TB17 in London's Science Museum: what look like corticene on deck except above boiler rooms:
Attachment:
Torpedoboat17.jpg
Painting the deck supposed to be black in a dack grey, maybe with a hint of green & brown would look fine (I used german WWII aircraft graugrün RLM74
)