SS Kaiser Wilhelm II

Kaiser Wilhelm II was a 19,361 gross register ton passenger ship built at Stettin, Germany. The ship was completed in the spring of 1903. At the time of her launch she was larger by 1,900 tons than any other German ship and was surpassed in the weight of her hull and machinery only by the British liners RMS Cedric and RMS Celtic. The ship was seized by the U.S. Government during World War I, and subsequently served as a transport ship under the name USS Agamemnon. A famous photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz called The Steerage, as well as descriptions of the conditions of travel in the lowest class, have conflicted with her otherwise glitzy reputation as a high class, high speed transatlantic liner. The ship is well-known as the vessel which took Gustav Mahler on his last trip to the United States in October 1910, as well as Jean Sibelius to the States to conduct the premiere of his tone poem The Oceanides in May 1914.