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USS DeKalb

USS DeKalb (ID - 3010), cira 1918.jpg
The ship underway as USS DeKalb, circa 1918
History
German Empire
Name: Prinz Eitel Friedrich
Namesake: Prince Eitel Friedrich of Prussia
Operator: North German Lloyd, then Kaiserliche Marine
Port of registry: Bremen
Route: Bremen - Tsingtao
Builder: AG Vulcan, Stettin, Germany
Cost: 4.895 million German Goldmark
Launched: 18 June 1904
Maiden voyage: 13 October 1904
Reclassified: Auxiliary cruiser
Captured: Interned April 1915
Fate: Seized April 1917
United States
Name: USS DeKalb
Namesake: General Baron Johann de Kalb
Operator:
Route: New York - Hamburg (as liner)
Recommissioned: 12 May 1917
Decommissioned: 22 September 1919
Renamed: SS Mount Clay
Reclassified:
Refit:
  • 1917 (as troop ship)
  • 1920 (as liner)
Identification: ID-3010
Fate: Scrapped 1934
General characteristics
Tonnage: 8,865 GRT
Displacement: 14,180 long tons (14,410 t)
Length: 506 ft 6 in (154.38 m)
Beam: 55 ft 6 in (16.92 m)
Draft: 26 ft (7.9 m)
Installed power: 7,500 bhp (5,600 kW)
Propulsion: 2 quadruple expansion steam engines, 2 screws
Speed: 15 knots (28 km/h)
Capacity:
  • (as passenger liner) 158 1st Class,
  • 156 2nd Class,
  • 48 3rd class,
  • plus 706 'tween deck passengers (when not in mail service)
Complement:
  • (as passenger liner) 222 men;
  • (as troop ship) 534 officers and enlisted crew
Armament: four 105 mm (4.1 in) guns, six 88 mm (3.5 in) guns

USS DeKalb (ID-3010) was a German mail ship Prinz Eitel Friedrich that served during the early part of the First World War as an auxiliary cruiser (Hilfkreuzer) in the German Navy and later after the US entry into the war, as US Navy troop ship. Post war she returned to civilian service as the US transatlantic liner SS Mount Clay.

The ship was a North German Lloyd (NDL) mail ship and ocean liner built by AG Vulcan, Stettin, Germany, and launched 18 June 1904 as Prinz Eitel Friedrich. NDL had ordered her for the German Mail route between Germany and the Far East, for which she began her maiden voyage on 13 October.

When the First World War broke out on 1 August 1914 she was in Shanghai, China and was ordered to Tsingtao in the then German Kiaochow Bay concession. There she was quickly converted to an auxiliary cruiser for the Imperial German Navy by transferring the guns and crews of the German gunboats SMS Tiger and SMS Luchs to Prinz Eitel Friedrich.

For the next seven months she operated on the high seas with Vice Admiral Maximilian von Spee's squadron off South American and then as a detached commerce raider. She sank or captured eleven ships in the Pacific and the South Atlantic. Among these was the schooner William P. Frye, captured on 27 January 1915 and scuttled the next day, the first U.S. flagged vessel sunk in World War I.


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