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Career
Owners:	Norddeutscher Lloyd
Builders:	Stettiner Vulcan, Stettin
Laid down:	1896
Launched:	May 4, 1897
Christened:	May 4, 1897
Maiden voyage:	September 19, 1897
Fate:	sunk (scuttled) after fighting HMS Highflyer
General characteristics
Tonnage:	14,349 gross tons
Length:	655 feet (200.1 m)
Beam:	65.8 feet (20.1 m)
Power:	triple expansion reciprocating engines driving twin screws, 33,000 horsepower (25 MW)
Speed:	22.5 knots
Complement:	1506 passengers (206 first class, 226 second class, 1074 third class), 488 crew

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, ("Kaiser William the Great"), named after the first emperor of the new (post-1871) German Empire, Kaiser Wilhelm I, was a German ocean liner of the Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) shipping line. She is notable for a number of things, including being the first German ship to win the Blue Riband and the first passenger ship (although acting as a warship at the time) sunk in World War I.

She was built by Vulcan shipyards in Stettin and launched on 4 May 1897. She made her maiden voyage on 19 September of that year, from Bremerhaven to New York. In November 1897, she set an eastbound North Atlantic crossing record from Sandy Hook to the Needles, and four months later she captured the westbound Blue Riband, taking it from Cunard's Lucania. She held these records until Hapag's SS Deutschland took the eastbound record in July 1900 and the westbound one in September 1903. The fact that German ships took over this famed prize eventually led the British to build their Mauretania and Lusitania duo.

The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse became the first liner to have a commercial wireless telegraphy system when the Marconi Company installed one in February 1900. Communications were demonstrated with systems installed at the Borkum Island lighthouse and Borkum Riff lightship 30 km northwest of the island, as well as with British stations. The ship was also the first liner to have four funnels, which would become a symbol of safety and prestige.

The ship escaped a massive fire at NDL's Hoboken, New Jersey, piers in June 1900, which badly damaged her running mates, Main, Bremen and Saale, and killed 161 crewmen on those ships. Six years later, in November 1906, she was struck broadside while trying to cross in front of the Royal Mail's Orinoco; five passengers on Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse were killed by the impact and a hole 21 meters (70 ft) wide by 8 meters (26 ft) high was ripped into her hull. An Admiralty Court found the accident to be entirely attributable to Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.

In 1914 she was modified to take 3rd and 4th class fares only, in order to make the most of the large demand for emigrant passages from Europe to North America.

In August 1914 the ship was requisitioned by the Kaiserliche Marine and converted into an auxiliary cruiser, assigned to commerce raiding in the Atlantic. She was fitted with six 10.5 cm (4 inch) guns and two 37 mm guns. After sparing two passenger ships because they were carrying many women and children, she sank two freighters before she herself sank on August 26, 1914. She was caught refuelling off the shore of the then Spanish colony of Rio de Oro in western Africa by the old British 6-inch gunned cruiser HMS Highflyer. Badly outgunned, the ship eventually ran out of ammunition. The crew abandoned and scuttled her. British sources at the time insisted that Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse sank because of the damage inflicted by Highflyer. Whatever the cause, she was the first passenger ship sunk during World War I.

• SS Kronprinz Wilhelm - sister ship of Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse

• Maritimequest Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse photo gallery
• Lostliners: Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse