On 24 January 1935, after leaving New York City on one of her regularly scheduled trips, she suffered a failure of her automatic steering gear and collided with Norwegian cargo ship Talisman.
In addition, a veranda café and a spacious dining hall able to sit 180 people at once, a musical lounge, a library, a large dancing deck, and smoking rooms were also constructed to provide entertainment for the would be passengers.
Mohawk had freight decks separated into lighted, ventilated watertight compartments, some of them chilled with refrigerating machinery, supplied with large number of side ports for quick loading and unloading of the cargo.
[6] The ship left Jacksonville for her return trip on June 13, and arrived at New York on February 15, thus bringing her maiden voyage to successful conclusion.
[7] Mohawk continued serving the same route for the major part of her career, connecting Charleston and Jacksonville with New York, with occasional stops at Brunswick.
In early March 1927 Mohawk carried Aimee Semple McPherson from New York to Florida at the time of her "vindication tour" during which she visited numerous cities taking advantage of the publicity her kidnapping story created to preach the Gospel.
Due to heavy rain the night before, the weather was very foggy in and around New York harbor and the fog slowly spread out from the city to surrounding waters throughout the day.
Shortly after 15:00 as Mohawk was slowly proceeding down the Lower Bay on her way out, an oncoming ship, later determined to be Old Dominion Line steamship Jefferson coming from Norfolk with 67 passengers, was suddenly sighted ahead.
Due to very short distance between the ships, nothing could be done to avert the collision, and at about 15:11 Jefferson smashed into Mohawk' starboard side just forward of amidships opening a wide gap.
In the meantime, Jefferson backed out of collision and slowly proceeded to anchor herself off Ambrose Channel north off Sandy Hook to wait out the fog and determine the extent of sustained damage.
By 21:00 all passengers were safely transferred to the US Coast Guard cutter Seminole which was standing by Mohawk while the captain and the crew remained aboard the ship.
In order to refloat the steamship, a patch was placed over the hole and water was pumped out and then a layer of ice was created over the canvas using the ship's refrigeration machinery.
Two attempts were made but proved unsuccessful but on the third try Mohawk was successfully refloated in the evening of May 21 during high tide and towed to New York by two wrecking tugs.
[14][15][16] On July 3, 1933 Mohawk while on her return trip from Galveston ran into the fringes of a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico but escaped largely unscathed with an exception of two injured musicians.
[18] Mohawk left New York City for Havana on the afternoon of 24 January 1935 with 110 crew, 53 passengers and a general cargo of car parts and china on board.
Four hours after having left New York Harbor at about 9 PM, the Mohawk spotted the Norwegian cargo ship Talisman at a distance of 0.125 nautical miles (232 m).
None of the bridge officers survived the accident and Captain Joseph Wood, after verifying that all other persons had safely evacuated the ship, went back to his cabin and shut the door.
During the moving, a heavy steel cable was forced back and forth through the superstructure which snapped the deck plates apart and ripped the bridge from the hull, scattering debris into the currents.
[23] A few years later during World War II, the Coast Guard bombed the Mohawk with depth charges as German U-boats had been hiding alongside wrecks in these waters as to dodge sonar waves.