MV Spreewald was a Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) cargo motor ship that was launched in 1922 and sunk in a friendly fire incident in 1942.

The first was a steamship that was launched in 1907, captured in 1914, and was converted into the submarine depôt ship HMS Lucia.

[2] Between 1921 and 1923 Deutsche Werft in Hamburg built a class of ten single-screw cargo ships for HAPAG.

Westerwald, Frankenwald, Wasgenwald, Idarwald, and Kellerwald had only a triple-expansion engine, with no exhaust steam turbine.

[7][18][19] Spreewald was in the Far East when France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany in September 1939.

[20] En route she met the German supply ship Kulmerland in the Society Islands.

Kulmerland transferred to Spreewald 86 UK prisoners of war, who had survived the German auxiliary cruiser Kormoran sinking their ships.

Spreewald disguised herself as two Allied cargo ships: the Norwegian Elg and British Brittany.

U-123 also arranged to be at the rendezvous, in order for Spreewald's ship's doctor to treat an injured man aboard the U-boat.

Spreewald's wireless telegraph operator broadcast a distress signal under her other pseudonym, Brittany.

U-333 received the distress signal, from which the U-boat commander, Peter-Erich Cremer, concluded he had hit an Allied cargo ship.