SS Kaiser Wilhelm II was a Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL) Kaiser-class ocean liner.

The weight of her hull and machinery was surpassed only by the British White Star Liners RMS Cedric and Celtic.

[2] She was designed with places to mount guns, allowing her to be converted into an auxiliary cruiser for the Imperial German Navy.

[5] The First Class dining saloon was three decks high and was in Poppe's signature German Baroque revival style.

It records the crowded conditions in which steerage passengers, many of them emigrants, traveled on even the largest and most prestigious ocean liners.

[12] On 17 June 1914 Kaiser Wilhelm II collided with the 3,060 GRT British cargo steamship Incemore in thick fog off the Needles.

The liner's hull was holed below the waterline, but her watertight bulkheads held and she returned to Southampton under her own power.

When the US Government declared war on Germany on 6 April 1917, it seized German ships in US-controlled ports, including Kaiser Wilhelm II.

At sea on 9 November 1917 she was damaged in a collision with another large ex-German transport, USS Von Steuben, but completed her crossing to Europe a few days later.

After her return to the US in December and subsequent repairs, Agamemnon steamed to France in mid-January 1918 and thereafter regularly crossed the North Atlantic in support of the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front.

USS Agamemnon was decommissioned late in August and turned over to the War Department for use as a US Army Transport.