United States Shipping Board in the context of USS West Mahomet

Kronprinz Wilhelm was a German ocean liner built for Norddeutscher Lloyd, a shipping company now part of Hapag-Lloyd, by the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), in 1901. She was named after Crown Prince Wilhelm, son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, and was a sister ship of Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.

The ship had a varied career, starting off as a world-record-holding passenger liner, then as an auxiliary warship from 1914–1915 for the Imperial German Navy, sailing as a commerce raider for a year, and then interned in the United States when she ran out of supplies. When the US entered World War I, the US Government seized the ship and renamed USS Von Steuben, and served as a United States Navy troop transport until she was decommissioned. After the war, Von Steuben was turned over to the United States Shipping Board, where she remained in service until she was scrapped in 1923.

SS Kronprinzessin Cecilie was an ocean liner built in Stettin, Germany in 1906 for Hapag-Lloyd that had the largest steam reciprocating machinery ever fitted in a ship at the time of construction. The last of four ships of the Kaiser class, she was also the last German ship to have been built with four funnels. She was engaged in transatlantic service between her home port of Bremen and New York until the outbreak of World War I.

On 4 August 1914, at sea after leaving New York, she turned around and put into Bar Harbor, Maine, where she later was interned by the neutral United States. After that country entered the war in April 1917, the ship was seized and turned over to the United States Navy, and renamed USS Mount Vernon (ID-4508). While serving as a troop transport, Mount Vernon was torpedoed in September 1918. Though damaged, she was able to make port for repairs and returned to service. In October 1919 Mount Vernon was turned over for operation by the Army Transport Service in its Pacific fleet based at Fort Mason in San Francisco. USAT Mount Vernon was sent to Vladivostok, Russia to transport elements of the Czechoslovak Legion to Trieste, Italy and German prisoners of war to Hamburg, Germany. On return from that voyage, lasting from March through July 1920, the ship was transferred to the United States Shipping Board and laid up at Solomons Island, Maryland until September 1940 when she was scrapped at Boston, Massachusetts.