SS Kroonland - Panama Pacific Line Service, 1915

Panama Pacific Line Service, 1915

In May 1915, Kroonland and sister ship Finland were chartered to the Panama Pacific Line for the long-planned service between New York and San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Kroonland departed from New York for California on 22 May and counted 50 honeymooning couples and a large cargo of flour from St. Paul, Minnesota, among her payload. The intercoastal trip took about 17 days each way and the ships called at either Los Angeles or San Diego on eastbound and westbound trips. With two ships on the route, one ship departed from either New York or San Francisco about every three weeks. The service was marketed as the ideal manner to visit the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. At the San Francisco exhibition, a detailed model of Kroonland was one of ten that comprised a part of IMM's 6,500-square-foot (600 m2) exhibit in the Palace of Transportation.

Frequent and progressively worse landslides in the canal disrupted Kroonland's and Finland's service. In August 1915, Kroonland's arrival in New York was delayed a day by a Gaillard Cut slide. In early September, both ships were delayed ten days while waiting for the canal to be dredged after another slide. In early October, another landslide in the Gaillard Cut—this one in excess of 1,000,000 cubic yards (760,000 m3) of mud and dirt—closed the canal, and it was expected that it might remain closed for as long as ten months. Kroonland was en route to the canal from San Francisco, while Finland was at the canal's eastern terminus, Colón. After Kroonland arrived at the canal's western end at Balboa, the two liners exchanged passengers—including former First Lady Helen Taft and her daughter, Helen—by rail across the isthmus.