Kronprinz Wilhelm was a German ocean liner built for Norddeutscher Lloyd, a shipping company now part of Hapag-Lloyd, by the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), in 1901. She was named after Crown Prince Wilhelm, son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, and was a sister ship of .
The ship had a varied career, starting off as a world-record-holding passenger liner, then as an auxiliary warship from 1914 to 1915 for the Imperial German Navy, sailing as a commerce raider for a year, and then interned in the United States when she ran out of supplies. When the US entered World War I, the US Government seized the ship and renamed the USS Von Steuben, and served as a United States Navy troop transport until she was decommissioned. After the war, Von Steuben was turned over to the United States Shipping Board, where she remained in service until she was scrapped in 1923.
German passenger liner (1901–1914)
Kronprinz Wilhelm was launched on 30 March 1901. Her registered length was , her beam was and her depth was . Her tonnages were and . She had twin screws propellers, each driven by a six-cylinder quadruple expansion engine. Between them her twin engines were rated at 3,534 NHP.
She started her transatlantic maiden voyage on 17 September 1901 from Bremerhaven via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York. She was one of the fastest and most luxurious liners on the North Atlantic and stayed on that run until 1914. Her total cost in 1901 was approximately $3.2 million, half a million more than her predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm der Große.
The ship had a Marconi wireless telegraph,Berliner Tageblatt, Sunday 16 February 1902, p. 1 and by 1913 her call sign was DKP. She had electric central heating, and 1,900 electric lamps. About 60 electric motors worked bridge cranes, fans, elevators, refrigerators and auxiliary machinery. Kronprinz Wilhelm had a control panel in the map room to close or open the 20 watertight doors.E. und M. Elektrotechnik und Maschinenbau 20 Elektrotechnischer Verein Österreichs, Wien 1902. p. 117 If a door was closed, this was shown by a lamp. This security system alone needed of special cables and of normal cables. At one point in 1907 the ship rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, but was still able to complete her voyage.
On 18 September 1901 Kronprinz Wilhelm was damaged on its maiden voyage from Cherbourg to New York by a huge rogue wave. The wave struck the ship head-on.The New York Times, 26 September 1901, p. 16 In 1902, she was involved in two different collisions in the waters off Southampton. In the first, she collided with the cargo vessel Robert Ingham in foggy weather. The cargo ship sank, with two fatalities, but Kronprinz Wilhelm sustained little damage. On October 8, 1902, Kronprinz Wilhelm collided with a Royal Navy destroyer, . The two vessels were pulled into contact with each other when Wizard tried to pass the much larger Kronprinz Wilhelm. Wizard sustained heavy damage, but Kronprinz Wilhelm escaped relatively unharmed.
In September 1902, captained by August Richter, Kronprinz Wilhelm won the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing yet from Cherbourg to New York in a time of five days, 11 hours, 57 minutes, with an average speed of .
In her time as a passenger liner, many famous international personalities sailed on Kronprinz Wilhelm. These included the lawyer and politician Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler (1903),The New York Times, 24 December 1903, p. 3 the opera singer Lillian Blauvelt (1903), the theatrical manager and producer Charles Frohman (1904) who died in 1915 aboard ; businessman John Jacob Astor (1906) who died in 1912 aboard ; the "most picturesque woman in America", Rita de Acosta Lydig, and her second husband, Captain Philip M. Lydig (1907);The New York Times, 31 October 1907, p. 3 the author Lloyd Osbourne (1907); the star conductor Alfred Hertz (1909); the ballerina Adeline Genée (1908); the theatrical and opera producer Oscar Hammerstein together with the conductor Cleofonte Campanini and the opera singers Mario Sammarco, Giuseppe Taccani and Fernando Gianoli-Galetti (1909);The New York Times, 14 April 1909, p. 11The New York Times, 27 June 1909, p. C2 and the multi-millionaire, politician and lawyer Samuel Untermyer (1910).
Interiors The interiors of Kronprinz Wilhelm were designed by Johann Poppe, the chief interior designer for Norddeutscher Lloyd's liners between 1881 and 1907. Cunard executives who visited the Kronprinz and the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse in 1903 described Poppe's interiors as "bizarre, extravagant and crude, loud in colour and restless in form, obviously costly, and showy to an extreme degree."
Kronprinz Wilhelm offered its First Class passengers such public rooms as a social hall, a music room, smoking room, and library. The dining room could seat 414 and was topped by a glass skylight set within a cupola. The walls consisted of green and bronze panels, while the ceilings were painted with allegories of the four seasons, day and night, etc. The library and smoking room were both decorated in the Renaissance style. The Smoking Room was crowned by a glass dome and paneled and furnished in blue-stained oak, with oak beams supporting the ceiling. Paintings showing episodes from the history of the House of Hohenzollern were placed along the walls.
The Scientific American Supplement noted that "the accommodations are finished on the same rich scale of decoration which obtains on the "Kaiser Wilhelm:" but with the difference that the color scheme is more subdued and, therefore, more restful to the eye." The finest accommodation aboard were 4 "cabines de luxe" consisting of sitting room, several bedrooms and a bathroom, and 8 staterooms with an en-suite bathroom.
State visit of 1902
In 1902, Prince Heinrich of Prussia (1862–1929)—brother of Kaiser Wilhelm II—made a state visit to New York, where he was received by President Theodore Roosevelt. Media-oriented, he sailed on the new, impressive Kronprinz Wilhelm, on which a huge number of reporters could accompany him, and not the imperial yacht. There were also 300 passengers and 700 steerage passengers aboard. This state visit was also an early example of film reporting. This was also the ship's first voyage under Captain August Richter, who was the captain until August 1907.
On 9 May 1904, the Kronprinz Wilhelm anchored off Plymouth for passengers and mail to be put ashore by tender, sparking a race between the Great Western Railway (who had the contract to carry the mail) and the London and South Western Railway (who had the passenger contract) to see who would be the first to get the mail/passengers to London. The race was won by the GWR, whose locomotive City of Truro was recorded at 102.3 mph during the descent of Wellington Bank in Somerset. It was claimed by recorder Charles Rous-Marten that gold was transferred from the Kronprinz Wilhelm to the GWR train, as a payment to the French for the construction costs of the Panama canal. However this is doubtful as any gold bound for France would have been offloaded in France rather than England, and the Kronprinz Wilhelm was not moored off Plymouth long enough for this quantity of gold to have been unloaded.
German auxiliary cruiser (1914–1915) When Germany entered World War I, Kronprinz Wilhelm was on the western side of the Atlantic, under the command of Captain Grahn. She was commissioned into the Imperial German Navy, and ordered to rendezvous with to take on two rapid-firing guns, 290 rounds of 88 mm ammunition, a machine gun, and 36 rifles as well as one officer, two non-commissioned officers, and 13 ratings. She was commissioned as an auxiliary cruiser. Lieutenant Commander (Kapitanleutnant) Paul Thierfelder—formerly Karlsruhes navigation officer—became her commander, and Grahn was made 1st Officer.
The close proximity of the British cruiser abbreviated the rendezvous, forcing the two German ships to cast off hastily and speed away in different directions. Kronprinz Wilhelm took a meandering course towards the Azores, arriving on 17 August and rendezvousing with the German steamship off São Miguel Island.
Provisioning and training
Walhalla and Kronprinz Wilhelm headed south from the Azores, while transferring coal from Walhalla to Kronprinz Wilhelm. She then learned from German representatives at Las Palmas in the Canary Islands that no further coal would be available in the neighborhood of the Azores and the Canaries. Consequently, her commanding officer decided to head for the Brazilian coast, where he hoped to find sources of coal more friendly to Germany or at least a greater choice of neutral ports in which to intern his ship if she should find herself unable to replenish her supplies from captured ships.
On the voyage to the Azores and thence to the South American coast, Kronprinz Wilhelm had to avoid contact with all shipping since she was not ready to embark upon her mission raiding Allied commerce. The guns had to be emplaced and a target for gunnery practice constructed. The crew—mostly reservists and civilians—received a crash course in their duties in a warship and in general naval discipline. A "prize crew" was selected and trained in the techniques of boarding captured vessels (prizes), inspecting cargo and ship's papers, and using explosive charges to sink captured ships. Finally, all members of the crew were outfitted in some semblance of a naval uniform.
The crew worked at a feverish pace in order to be ready, and by the time Kronprinz Wilhelm met Karlsruhes tender — Asuncion — near Rocas Reef north of Cape San Roque on 3 September, preparations were nearly complete. At 20:30 the following evening, the auxiliary cruiser encountered a target, the British steamship . The merchantman stopped without the raider's firing a shot. Heavy seas, however, postponed the boarding until shortly after 06:00 the following morning. The prize crew found a cargo composed largely of contraband, but before sinking the ship, Commander Thierfelder wanted to salvage as much of her supplies and fuel as he could. Continued heavy seas precluded the transfer until the afternoon of 8 September. Indian Princes crew and passengers were brought over to Kronprinz Wilhelm at around 14:00, and the two ships moved alongside each other immediately thereafter. Coaling started and continued throughout the night of 8/9 September. The following morning, the German prize crew detonated three explosive charges which sank Indian Prince. Kronprinz Wilhelm then headed south to rendezvous with several German supply ships.