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 homeport of Bremen and New York until the outbreak of World War I when she sought safety at Bar Harbor. She was carrying c. $10,000,000 in gold and $3,400,000 in silver.
"One morning in the summer of 1914 my husband got up and looked out the window, then called me and said in a tone of utter amazement, “There’s an ocean liner in the harbor.” Everyone knows the story of the "Kronprinzessin Cecile," how the news of the war had overtaken her in mid-ocean with her cargo of $10 million in American gold and a full complement of 1200 passengers…" - "Only in Maine: Selections from Down East Magazine," edited by Duane Doolittle, foreword by John Gould, “Old Bar Harbor Days” chapter by Marian L. Peabody, Downeast Enterprise Incorporated, Camden, Maine, 1969, p. 244.
