SS Athinai was a Greek passenger steamship that was built in England in 1908 and sank in the North Atlantic in 1915.

The new company renamed Moraitis as Themistocles, and took delivery of the slightly larger Athinai after she was completed in October 1908.

[3] Sir Raylton Dixon and Company Ltd built Athinai at Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, launching her on 19 June 1908 and completing her that October.

[5] Her route was between Piraeus and New York via Kalamata and Patras in Greece, Palermo in Sicily, and São Miguel in the Azores.

[7] The District Attorney sought $20,000 bail for Captain Koulowas and $10,000 for his Chief Engineer, Petros Kyrkinos.

The National Steamship Navigation Company Ltd of Greece bought Athinai, kept her on the same route,[11] and appointed Embiricos Brothers to manage her.

One second class passenger, Tomaso Sotoniou[17] of Meadville, Pennsylvania, died of heart disease 15 hours after boarding Tuscania, and was buried at sea.

[20][21] Tuscania landed survivors at Brooklyn, where immigration officers detained 29 of them to be taken to Ellis Island and deported.

Based on his testimony, the National Steamship Company hired a detective agency to investigate the workers involved in loading the hold.

Robert Fay and Walter Scholz had attracted suspicion by trying to buy 10 pounds (4.5 kg) of picric acid, an ingredient in certain explosives.

[24] Fay and Scholz readily confessed that they were working for the German secret service and had tried to blow up ships.

[26] On 3 November 1915 a federal grand jury took up the cases of Fay, Scholz and Germans suspected in other bomb plots.

[27] Daeche obtained a writ of habeas corpus against the charges brought against him, but a judge in New Jersey overturned it on 23 December.

[29] The trial was shown dynamite that Fay had obtained,[30] and a mechanical timing and detonating device that he had designed and made with parts including shafts, gear wheels, plungers, springs, firing pins and gun cartridges.

[32] A model of the stern of a ship was shown to the court to show how Fay's device would be secured to the rudder post.

The normal operation of the rudder would wind up the device's clockwork mechanism, and eventually detonate the TNT explosive charge.

A United States Army Coast Artillery Corps lieutenant from Fort Wadsworth told the court that the device, if detonated, would blow the stern off a ship.