One of the many ships captured and sunk by the auxiliary cruiser SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm was the SS Tamar. She was built in 1902 at Craig, Taylor & Co., Stockton-on-Tees for the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company. She was located and captured on Mar. 24, 1915 almost 600 miles northeast of Recife, Brazil. There seems to have been nothing dramatic about the capture, just another ship sent to the bottom, but for the German raider it brought problems. The crew of the Tamar were taken aboard a ship that had just about run her course.

Kronprinz Wilhelm was in New York when World War 1 broke out, on Aug. 15, 1914 she left port and broke out into the North Atlantic where she rendezvoused with the cruiser SMS Karlsruhe in mid ocean, there the passenger liner was provided with several guns and a crew from the Kaiserliche Marine. The four funnel liner was now a warship in service of the Kaiser.

The Kronprinz Wilhelm operated off South America capturing a number of ships, but never had enough supplies, food, coal or ammunition giving the captain and crew quite an incentive not to sink without warning, but to capture the enemy vessels without causing too much damage, then removing what was needed and sending the ship to the bottom. Because of the lack of proper guns and ammo this was usually accomplished by opening the seacocks rather than by gunfire.

Three days after sinking the Tamar, the SS Coleby became the last victim of the Kronprinz Wilhelm, her crew and the crew of the Tamar were on board when the ragged ship, rusted, dirty and listing from months at sea without proper maintenance, limped into Newport News, Virginia on Apr. 11, 1915. In addition to the poor condition of the ship, her prisoners and crew were in terrible shape. Almost 100 had beriberi due to the horrendous condition of the food they were forced to survive on.

The ship was interned and after the USA entered the war she was seized and transformed into a troopship and renamed USS Von Steuben ID-3017. She was used to take troops to Europe and than after the war she brought them back home. The ship that served as a passenger liner, a cruiser and a trooper was scrapped in 1923 at Boston Metals.