USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) - North German Lloyd

North German Lloyd

North German Lloyd renamed the newly acquired ship Princess Alice, though the German spelling Prinzess Alice was widely used in contemporary press coverage and, often, by the Lloyd themselves. There is some confusion as to who exactly was the namesake of the ship. Edwin Drechsel, in his two-volume work Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen, 1857–1970, reports that the ship was named equally for Princess Alice of Albany and Alice Roosevelt. Princess Alice of Albany was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and the new bride of Prince Alexander of Teck in Württemberg. Alice Roosevelt, daughter of the then-current U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, was nicknamed "Princess Alice" by the press, and had launched the racing yacht of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Meteor, at Staten Island two years before. William Lowell Putnam gives the namesake as Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, the daughter of Queen Victoria.

Princess Alice departed her new homeport of Bremen on 22 March 1904 for her maiden voyage under her new owners. After arriving in New York draped in flags and bunting, her dining room was the site of a press luncheon thrown by Lloyd staff celebrating her first arrival in that city. Princess Alice made four more roundtrips through early August, then shifted to Bremen–Suez Canal–Far East service, making her first Lloyd voyage on that route 31 August. Princess Alice would continue this pattern—sailing the North Atlantic during the heaviest-trafficked season and shifting to the Far East runs for the balance of the year—through 1910.

Throughout the rest of her Lloyd North Atlantic career she carried some notable passengers to and from Europe. In May 1905, for example, noted Baltimore gynecologist Howard Atwood Kelly, one of the co-founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital, sailed from New York; author Hamilton Wright Mabie and his wife sailed from New York the following month. American botanist Charles Frederick Millspaugh returned to New York aboard the German liner in June 1906, and retired U.S. Navy Rear admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan did the same in June 1907. Senator Augustus O. Bacon (D-GA), sailed for Europe on 1 August 1908.

Prompted by the successful use of wireless in saving lives during the sinking of RMS Republic in January 1909, and by proposed U.S. legislation (later passed as the Wireless Ship Act of 1910) requiring wireless for ships calling at U.S. ports, Princess Alice received her first wireless set in February 1909. Operating with call letters "DKZ" on the 300 m band, her radio had a 250-mile (400 km) range.

Senator A. O. Bacon, left, and retired Rear Admiral A. T. Mahan sailed on Princess Alice in the 1900s.

At 10:00 on 27 May 1909, loaded with over 1,000 passengers headed for Europe, Princess Alice departed the Lloyd pier in Hoboken, New Jersey. As she neared The Narrows in a heavy fog, she steamed to stay clear of outbound French Line steamer La Bretagne and ran hard aground on a submerged rocky ledge near the seawall of Fort Wadsworth a few minutes after 11:00. After the fog lifted, it was revealed that the bow of Princess Alice had stopped some 5 feet (1.5 m) from the outer walls of the Staten Island fort. Lighthouse tender Larkspur was the first ship to come to the aid of the Princess, followed by U.S. Army Quartermaster's ship General Meigs and revenue cutter Seneca. No passengers were hurt in the incident and it was determined there was no damage to the hull of the liner. But, despite the effort of attending ships, she would remained stuck on the ledge. Eventually, after offloading 500 short tons (450 t) of cargo from her front hold onto lighters called to the scene, ten steam tugs and power from Princess Alice's own engines freed the ship at 01:47 on 28 May, almost 15 hours after running aground. Unfortunately, the force required to free the liner was great enough that she was then propelled into SS Marken, at anchor some distance away, damaging one of that ship's fenders. After then making her way to the nearby New York City Quarantine Station, Princess Alice anchored to reload her cargo, and by 09:05, the was underway again. However, completing her comedy of errors, she ran aground again in soft mud in Ambrose Channel at 10:15. This time she was able to free herself and proceeded on to Bremen, a little more than 24 hours late. This voyage was further marred by the apparent suicide of a despondent New York attorney on 30 May. The man, headed to the spa town of Bad Nauheim in Hesse, had previously suffered a nervous breakdown and was under the care of a doctor on board the ship at the time he jumped overboard.

In May 1910, Princess Alice sailed her last North Atlantic passage for her German owners. Put permanently on the Far East route, she plied Pacific waters for North German Lloyd until the outbreak of World War I. In late July 1914, as war spread across Europe, Princess Alice neared her destination of Hong Kong with £850,000 of gold from India. Rather than face seizure of the ship and her cargo by British authorities there, Princess Alice instead sped to the Philippines and deposited the gold with the German Consul at Manila. Leaving the neutral port in under 24 hours, the ship then rendezvoused with German cruiser Emden at Angaur before returning to the Philippines in early August and putting in at Cebu where she was interned.