SS Willehad

Willehad in a 1916 newspaper report
History
Name	1894: Willehad 1918: Wyandotte
Namesake	1894: Willehad 1918: Wyandotte Nation
Owner	1894: Norddeutscher Lloyd 1917: US Shipping Board
Port of registry	1894: Bremen 1917: New York
Route	1894: Bremen – Hoboken 1895: Bremen – Baltimore 1900: Bremen – Sydney 1901: Bremen – South America 1904: Stettin – New York 1905: Yokohama – Sydney 1912: Hamburg – Montreal
Builder	Blohm+Voss, Hamburg
Launched	1894
Completed	May 1894
Maiden voyage	May – June 1894
Refit	1900; 1917
Identification	1894: code letters QFVL by 1914: call sign DWH 1917: US official number 215297 1917: code letters LHMD
Fate	scrapped 1924
General characteristics
Type	passenger ship
Tonnage	4,761 GRT, 3,012 NRT
Length	383.4 ft (116.9 m)
Beam	46.0 ft (14.0 m)
Depth	27.2 ft (8.3 m)
Decks	2
Installed power	514 NHP or 1,100 ihp
Propulsion	2 × triple-expansion engines 2 × screws
Speed	12 knots (22 km/h)
Capacity	passengers: 1894: 105 × 2nd class; 1,009 × 3rd class 1900: 150 × 1st class; 40 × 2nd class; 40 × 3rd class
Crew	70
Sensors and processing systems	by 1910: submarine signalling
Notes	sister ship: Wittekind

SS Willehad was a passenger and cargo steamship that was built in Germany in 1894 for Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL). For her first few years she took emigrants from Bremen to the United States. In 1900 she made one round trip between Bremen and Australia via the Suez Canal. Between 1901 and 1903 her route was between Bremen and South America. For a few months in 1904 she sailed between Stettin in Germany (now Szczecin in Poland) and New York. From the end of 1904 to the beginning of 1907 she was a mail ship between Japan and Australia. From 1911 until 1914 she ran transatlantic services between Hamburg and the United States, and also between Hamburg and Canada.

When the First World War began in 1914 she sheltered in Boston. In 1916 she became the first foreign ship to use the recently-built Cape Cod Canal, as she moved to New London, Connecticut to be a submarine tender to the cargo submarines Deutschland and Bremen. The US government seized her in 1917 and gave her to the United States Shipping Board (USSB), who in 1918 renamed her Wyandotte. After the end of the First World War she made at last two round trip voyages between the US and France, and repatriated a few dozen US troops. In 1920 she tramped as a purely cargo ship. She was scrapped in the US in 1924.