In 1914, the elegant luxury ship Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse was converted to an Armed Merchant Cruiser along with other German liners upon the outbreak of war. She sank three British liners, but allowed ships with women and children on board to go free. This chivalrous policy came to a halt when the British began using their passenger ships as a ruse to mount sneak attacks and fire upon unsuspecting German crews and their vessels.

Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse was very first German super liner. Built by Norddeutscher Lloyd, she shocked the British by winning the coveted the ‘Blue Ribbon’ trans-Atlantic speed record from them in 1897. On August 26, 1914, she was caught refuelling off the shore of Rio de Oro in western Africa by British cruiser HMS Highflyer. Badly outgunned, the crew abandoned her when they ran out of ammunition. She became the first passenger ship sunk during World War I.

The Kronprinzessin, known as the ‘Kaiser’s Treasure Ship,’ vanished according to news headlines. In reality, after help from an American banker/yachtsman, the Captain put into Bar Harbor, Maine. Residents of the fancy ‘playground of the rich’ awoke to find the Kronprinzen moored in their harbor under its fake name ‘Olympic.’

In bad condition and with a sick crew after a lengthy cruise and various battles, Kronprinz Wilhelm, also a converted luxury liner, sailed through patrolling British cruisers and made a run for Norfolk, Virginia in the still neutral USA on April 10, 1915. When the U.S. later entered the War, she was taken and renamed the Von Steuben and served as a US troopship.

In the months immediately before the purportedly neutral US entered the war on the British side, US government officials took inventory of German merchant ships trapped in American harbors. The internment of these ships, coupled with the Royal Navy blockade of the Central Powers, had of course limited the ability of Germany to acquire munitions from the U.S. and transport them across the ocean. There were no such corresponding limitations on the Allies buying and transporting such materials. In 1917, the US formally entered the war and all German ships they had previously ordered interned in American harbors were easily confiscated including Kronprinzessin Cecilie, Kronprinz Wilhelm, and other luxury liners. As these were not warships, the Navy had no authority over their crews but suggested that the Labor Department did have authority under “matters of immigration.” Wilson directed the Bureau of Immigration, in coordination with the Customs Bureau, to prepare to take custody of the officers and crew members of the German ships, and one minute after war was declared, Wilson had the conveniently waiting Customs Bureau officials cabled with authorization for the pre-planned taking charge of German vessels and crews.

Federal officials and military personnel henceforth took possession of 91 German-owned vessels in American waters with a combined displacement of about 600,000 tons. 27 of the vessels were in New York harbor and the others were scattered in ports on all three coasts and in several overseas possessions. The German ships seized were worth a fortune equivalent to an estimated $100 million.

While the seized ships were being guarded against sabotage and prepared for war on the side of the Allies, the Bureau of Immigration arranged for the internment of the crews who were not technically considered prisoners of war, but rather “illegal aliens from an enemy country.” At first the men were detained in the ports where they were seized, but the Bureau soon located a hotel in Hot Springs, North Carolina which could hold the 2,000 or so detainees. They were soon joined by 300 other German seamen and aliens brought into custody under the President’s Alien Enemy Proclamation. In 1918, the Department of Labor relinquished its control to the Justice Department and the men were placed within the War Department’s regular camps for all alien enemies, although some of them were eventually paroled and allowed to hold jobs.

They even hosted concerts on shore in order to raise funds for the German relief effort. The “Vaterland” was formally seized when the US declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. The 300 man crew was taken to Ellis Island and their ship was renamed the “Leviathan” by Wilson and used as a troop carrier, making 19 round trips until the end of the war. After the war, the worn out ship was at first laid up for a couple of years, then unsuccessfully converted to a passenger liner, and then reduced to being a cruise ship. In 1934, she was laid up for four years in Hoboken where she had previously spent six wasted years, until she was sailed away in January 1938 to her rusty, ugly death in a Scottish scrap yard.

The Hamburg-Amerika-Line’s “Bismarck” was another unfortunate German ship. Her launching on June 20, 1914 was only eight days after the events at Sarajevo. The massive ship was not even completed when war broke out. The “Bismarck,” intended to be the world’s largest ship and the flagship of the German merchant fleet, rusted away in the shipyard. Hopes that the liner would be finished after the war to reactivate German transatlantic service were shattered by the Treaty of Versailles which greedily ordered the Germans to complete the ship at their expense and hand it over to the British government! It took until May 1922 to finish the world’s largest ship, partly because the workers were so angry and disgusted at the humiliating demand. When the “Bismarck’s” new owners, the staff members of the White Star Line, arrived in Hamburg to fetch their booty, they found the funnels painted in Hamburg-America colors and the name “Bismarck” on the bow. The shipyards workers had converted the captain’s cabin into a garbage storage closet. Finally, she sailed away under the new name the “Majestic.” Her White Star running mates included other German war-prizes. She was eventually sold for scrap, but then converted into a training ship for the British admiralty and commissioned as the “Caledonia” in 1937. She burned in 1939 and was scrapped in 1940. World War One effectively ended German competition at sea forever, one of its primary goals.

Hamburg Amerika designed Deutschland to be larger and faster than Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse. On July 6, 1900, she began her maiden voyage from Hamburg to England and New York. After crossing in six days, she took the Blue Riband from Kaiser Wilhelm Der Grosse and held it in both directions until North German Lloyd’s Kronprinz Wilhelm took the westbound record in 1902. Deutschland held the eastbound record until the North German Lloyd’s Kaiser Wilhelm took that title in 1904.

The following year, Deutschland regained the westbound record, an honor she lost to Lusitania in 1907. Deutschland was returned to her builders in 1910 to undergo a thorough refit. She emerged from the shipyard in 1911 under the new name of Victoria Louise. Mechanical problems beginning in 1914 led to the ship being laid up throughout World War One, and this saved her the sorry fate of the other German luxury ships. When the war ended, Victoria Louise was the only large German liner the Allies had not confiscated. When her repairs were completed in 1921, Hamburg Amerika returned her to the Hamburg – New York run under the name Hansa, but she lost money after the US passed laws restricting European immigration. The beautiful ship was taken out of service in 1924 and scrapped at Hamburg in 1925.

Influenza raged on board her during her passage to New York on Jan. 17, 1920, infecting hundreds, some of them dying within a day’s time. On May 13, 1921, she was sold to Canadian Pacific and re-named the “Empress of Scotland,” converted to oil fuel and refitted to carry passengers. She embarked on her first voyage from Southampton to New York on January 22, 1922. Three months later, she made her second trans-Atlantic voyage, and two months after that she transferred to the Hamburg-Southampton-Cherbourg-Quebec service. In 1923, she was involved in a collision with the SS Bonus at Hamburg. In 1926, she was refitted again, this time with more accommodations for passengers. In 1927, another refit resulted in even more. The Empress of Scotland made her last voyage from Southampton to Cherbourg and Quebec on October 11, 1930 before being sold for scrap. She was gutted by fire and sank in the shipbreakers yard at Blyth, then raised and scrapped. By 1933, at only 28 years of age, the once magnificent German ship SS Kaiserin Auguste Victoria was gone, never to remind others of the glorious days of the German births of she and her sisters.