Wartime Visitors in Hampton Roads

On Sunday morning April 11, 1915 residents of Hampton Roads in Virginia woke to find a familiar stranger in their midst.  Looming in the water near Fort Monroe and in the middle of U.S. fleet of battleships was the huge but graceful form of the German steamship Kronprinz Wilhelm. 

Kronprinz Wilhelm April 11, 1915.  Courtesy of The Mariners' Museum, Newport News, VA

Ordinarily the ship would have appeared as one of the grandest passenger liners of its era, all sleek black and sparkling white.