SS Deutschland (1900)

SS "Deutschland" was a passenger liner owned by the Hamburg-Amerika Line of Germany. She sailed for over twenty-five years under three different names.

As the transatlantic liner "Deutschland"

Launched in 1900, she won the Blue Riband from the "Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse" of the North German Lloyd line, crossing the Atlantic Ocean in just a little over five days. She was the first and only four-stacker built for Hamburg-Amerika. She was 684 feet long, 67 feet wide and measured 16,502 gross tons. Her service speed was 22 knots and she carried 2,050 passengers in first, second and third class.

The "Deutschland" was indeed a fast ship, but this came at the expense of passenger comfort – her engines were so powerful that they caused severe vibrations in her passenger accommodations (thus the sobriquet "The Cocktail Shaker"). This made her unpopular with passengers.

In March 1902 she played a role in the Deutschland incident. When she was carrying Prince Henry, the brother of the Kaiser back to Europe from a highly publicized visit to the United States, she was prevented from using her Slaby-d'Arco system of wireless telegraphy as the Marconi radio stations refused its radio traffic through their nets and blocked the rival system. Prince Henry, who tried to send wireless messages to both the US and Germany, was outraged. During a later conference, the Marconi company was forced to give access to their stations to other companies. This incident turned out to be one of the important moments in the early history of wireless transmission.

econd career as cruise ship "Viktoria Luise"

In 1910 Hamburg-Amerika withdrew the "Deutschland" from transatlantic service and coverted her to a dedicated cruise ship - one of the first liners of the 20th century to operate as such. Her original engines were derated as a high service speed was no longer needed. At the same time, the exterior of the ship was repainted in all white and her passenger capacity was also reduced to only 500 first-class passengers. She was also given a new name, "Viktoria Luise". She replaced their first purpose-built cruise ship of similar name "(Prinzsessin Viktoria Luise)" that ran aground and was destroyed off the coast of Jamaica in 1906.

As the emigrant carrier "Hansa"

Because of her still-troublesome engines, the "Viktoria Luise" was not used by the German government in World War I. In 1921, she was pressed into emigrant carrier service and renamed "Hansa". But since the United States had recently passed laws restricting immigration, this service was less than successful and the "Hansa" was sold for scrap in 1925.

External links

* [http://www.greatoceanliners.net/deutschland.html The Great Ocean Liners: Deutschland]