Career
On 5 January 1901 Prinzessin Victoria Luise left Hamburg on her maiden voyage. She called at Boulogne and Plymouth, and reached Hoboken, New Jersey on 17 January. At first, her cruises were sometimes called "tours".[1] On 26 January she left New York on her first tour, which was to Port-au-Prince; Santo Domingo; San Juan; St Thomas, in what were then the Danish West Indies; Saint-Pierre; Port of Spain; La Guaira: Puerto Cabello; Curaçao; Kingston; Santiago de Cuba; Cienfuegos; and Havana.[2] She arrived back in Hoboken on 2 March.[3] On 9 March, she left Hoboken on a her second tour,[4] which was to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.[1] On 18 June she attended a Norddeutscher Regatta Verein regatta on the Elbe at Cuxhaven, where she hosted a dinner at which Wilhelm II gave a speech in which he praised Ballin as "a bold adventurer to make peaceful conquests, whose fruits our grandchildren will reap". The Kaiser also presented a portrait of himself to Ballin, bearing the dedication "to the farseeing and tireless pathbreaker for our German commerce and export".[5]
In February and March 1902 Prince Henry of Prussia visited the United States. On 11 March, as he left Hoboken aboard SS Deutschland (1900) to return home, the Hudson County Choristers sang to him from the deck of Prinzessin Victoria Luise.[6] Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were due to be crowned in Westminster on 26 June 1902. HAPAG arranged for Prinzessin Victoria Luise to leave New York on 10 June to take passengers to England for the coronation, calling at Le Havre and Hamburg as well as London.[7] However, Edward fell ill, and the coronation was postponed until 9 August.
In February and March 1903, Prinzessin Victoria Luise made a cruise that visited Bermuda as well as the Caribbean.[8] That summer, HAPAG scheduled her to sail to North Cape and Spitzbergen (now Svalbard) in Norway, and to the Baltic, leaving Hamburg on 6 June, 8 July and 28 July.[9] In September 1903 HAPAG announced that she would make a four-and-a-half month cruise almost the whole way around the World, including a fortnight in Japan. She would start on 13 September 1904, sail eastbound, and end at San Francisco on 26 January 1905.[10] On 12 April 1904 the ship left Hoboken on a cruise to the Mediterranean.[11]
In January 1904, in port in La Guaira, Prinzessin Victoria Luise hosted a reception at which HAPAG company officials entertained President Castro of Venezuela.[12] That May HAPAG revised her round-the-World tour plan. She would start from Hamburg on 25 September, and passengers from the United States could join her via the company's scheduled transatlantic services from New York. Ports of call were to include Lisbon, Gibraltar, Genoa, Piraeus, Istanbul, Jaffa, and Port Said, whence she would pass through the Suez Canal. She would then continue via Bombay (now Mumbai) and Calcutta. Passengers were offered the option to leave the ship at Bombay, make an 18-day overland tour of India, and rejoin her at Calcutta. She was to continue via Singapore, Manila, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama. Her intended arrival in San Francisco was brought forward to 17 January 1905. She was to leave San Francisco on 24 January to make her return voyage.[13] The ship would carry a band of musicians to entertain her 200 passengers.[14]
In June 1906 HAPAG announced that it would transfer Prinzessin Victoria Luise to its Atlas Service between Hoboken and the Caribbean, along with the Prinz-class cargo liners SS Prinz Eitel Friedrich, SS Prinz Waldemar, SS Prinz August Wilhelm, and SS Prinz Joachim. Prinzessin Victoria Luise's route would be between Hoboken and Jamaica. The Prinz-class ships would work the route between Hoboken and Colón via Kingston.[15]
