SS Sierra Cordoba was a Norddeutscher Lloyd passenger and cargo ship completed 1913 by AG Vulcan Stettin.

[3][note 3] During World War I Sierra Cordoba supplied German raiders, particularly SMS Dresden while hiding in the Straits of Magellan.

The ship was sold, renamed Ruth Alexander in 1923 and put into coastwise passenger and cargo service between Puget Sound and Mexico, typically calling at Seattle, Victoria, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and (by 1931) Ensenada, Mexico, until finally converted to a cargo ship in 1939.

[5] On 23 November 1914 Sierra Cordoba had arrived in Montevideo with captured crews from the liner La Correntina and the French barque Union sunk by SS Kronprinz Wilhelm.

[7] Dresden, after escaping at the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December, was sheltering in the waters south of the Straits of Magellan with British forces under Rear Admiral Archibald Stoddart actively searching for her location.

[14][15] The Peruvian government turned Callao over to the United States Shipping Board (USSB) whereupon she was towed from Lima by the dredge Culebra to Balboa, Panama in October 1918 to be the first of five seized German vessels to be repaired by the Panama Canal Company's Mechanical Division correcting damage from long internment and sabotage done by their German crews.

[23][24][29] During the transit from Manila to Balikpapan the ship was bombed and damaged by a Japanese flying boat in Makassar Strait on 31 December 1941, finally sinking on 2 January.

[24] A Navy press release, number 26 of 9 January 1942, noted the ship had been abandoned and declared a total loss with one crew member killed and four injured.