PPM Jul 11 - Picture Postcard Monthly

4th what was soon dubbed
“the German treasure ship”
reached the small port of
Bar Harbour, Maine, where
passengers were landed
and the bullion returned to
bankers’ agents.
In November she was
towed to Boston and
interned there.
Mount Vernon
When the United States
entered the war in April
(left) This North German Lloyd
poster (reproduced as a postcard)
publicised its twin screw
express steamship, the “Four
Flyers”, which ran a weekly service
leaving New York for Bremen
every Tuesday from 1907
until 1914. The company could
claim to have had the fastest
ships on the North Atlantic
crossings during the ten years
up to 1907, after which they
were marginally outpaced by
the new Cunard liners Lusitania
and Mauretania.
1917 the German liner was
taken over and converted
for use as an armed troopship,
renamed USS Mount
Vernon, from the Virginia
home of George Washington.
From 31 October 1917
she made ten voyages, each
carrying up to 4,800 Ameri-
The 19,400 ton Kaiser Wilhelm II pictured on this
card was the third of the
NDL “Four Flyers” in
trans-Atlantic service.
Built in the Vulkan yard at
Stettin, she made her
maiden voyage from Bremen
to New York in April
1903. During World War I
she was one of several
German ships interned at
New York. Taken over in
1917 by the U.S. Government
for use as a troopship,
she was renamed
Agamemnon. She was laid
up from 1920, no further
use being found for her, but
not finally scrapped until
1940.
can servicemen to Britain
and Europe - accommodated
in bunks 3 or 4 tiers high
packed in the former staterooms
and cabins.
On 5 September 1918,
homeward bound from
This postcard from the early 1900s depicts the liner Kaiser
Wilhelm der Grosse, the largest NDL vessel of the 19th
century, at 14,350 tons. Inaugurating the quartet of fourfunnellers
that became known as the Four Flyers, she
made her maiden voyage from Bremen to New York in
September 1897. She became the first of them to be lost,
an early victim of World War One. Having been fitted up as
an armed merchant cruiser, she was sunk in action off the
coast of West Africa on 27 August 1914 by HMS Highflyer...
an appropriate name in this context!
In connection with the
World’s Columbian Exposition staged at Chicago
from May to November 1893 (belatedly celebrating the
400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Columbus),
this card was distributed with “compliments of the
North German Lloyd S.S. Co. Bremen.” It depicted the first
NDL liner bearing the name Kaiser Wilhelm II, a 4,773 ton
steamship in service from 1889 until wrecked off Sardinia
in 1908. She was renamed Hohenzollern in 1901, allowing
her original name to be given to the larger new luxury liner
then under construction.
Brest with 1,400 wounded
soldiers aboard, the Mount
Vernon was struck amidships
by a torpedo from a
German U-boat, causing a
boiler room explosion that
killed 36 of her crew. The
ship was, however, able to
get back to Brest for temporary
repairs and then return
to Boston to be fully
repaired for further service.
From February 1919
she spent six months
bringing home American
servicemen - crammed in,
up to 6,000 at a time - after
which she was
Second in the
quartet of NDL four-funnelled liners was
the Kronprinz Wilhelm, depicted on this card. Another
product of the Vulkan yard, she began her trans-Atlantic
career in September 1901. In 1914-15 she evaded internment
at New York to operate for eight months as a German
commerce raider before coming under American control
and being taken over for U.S. Government duties. She was
renamed Von Steuben, recalling Baron Friedrich Wilhelm
von Steuben (1730-94) who had identified himself with the
cause of American independence, volunteering to serve as
drill master and inspector-general with George Washington’s
troops. He was rewarded by the U.S. Congress with
a pension and land grants, became an American citizen
and spent his last years at Steubenville, in New York State.
After World War I the ex-NDL liner associated with him
was unfit for further service and was laid up before being
sold off for scrapping in
1923. continued....
Picture Postcard Monthly July 2011 35