Vigilancia was a passenger and cargo ship until 1915, when she was bought by a company in Georgia to export US cotton to Germany.

[2] By December 1891 her route was between New York and Río de la Plata via St Thomas in the Danish West Indies; Barbados; and ports in Brazil.

[13] In April 1893 the US and Brazil SS Co went bankrupt, and its five ships were seized in lieu of debts to suppliers and unpaid wages to crew.

[15] On 1 November 1893 it was reported that the Brazilian Government had bought ten US merchant ships to convert into auxiliary cruisers to fight against the Revolta da Armada.

When the ship reached New York on 14 June, 11 passengers from second class were quarantined on Hoffman Island as a precaution against yellow fever.

[24] On 24 August that year she left Pacific Street, Brooklyn carrying 875 men of the 23rd Regiment, Kansas Volunteers.

She then sighted the Morgan Line steamship Winifred, which was disabled with her engine room flooded, superstructure damaged, and her funnel and lifeboats lost.

[34][35][36] By 17 January a high north wind and heavy rain were pounding Vigilancia, and it was feared she would be wrecked.

[38] On 12 May 1906 Vigilancia was en route from New York to Havana, carrying 62 passengers, when a fire was discovered in her cargo hold.

[3] At 11:55 hrs on 25 July 1909 she reached New York from the West Indies and Cuba; docked at Pier 18 at the foot of Joralemon Street; and disembarked 54 passengers.

[3][43][44] The fireboats Abram S. Hewitt and David A. Boody fought the fire, pouring water into her forward holds.

Engine Company 124 also fought the fire, along with a dozen men of the Fourth Division of the United States Navy Reserve's Second Naval Battalion, who arrived in a launch.

Eventually Vigilancia was afire from amidships to her bow, listing to starboard because of the water the firefighters poured into her, and her masts and one of her funnels collapsed.

[46] On 22 November 1911 the Hamburg America Line ship Prinz Joachim grounded off Samana Cay in the Bahamas.

[51] By January 1915 Walker, Armstrong & Co had bought Vigilancia, registered her in Savannah,[52] and had her converted into a cargo-only ship to export cotton to Europe.

[55] The next day a mine sank Carib, another of Walker, Armstrong's ships, off the German island of Norderney in the North Sea.

[59][60] It planned cargo-only services, both transatlantic between New York and Archangelsk; and transpacific between San Francisco and the Far East.

[61] GW&W shipped large numbers of US-built motor vehicles to the Entente Powers, including Packard and Peerless trucks.

[74][75][76] At 10:00 hrs on 16 March 1917 Vigilancia was in the Southwestern Approaches, making about 11 knots (20 km/h), when U-70 fired a torpedo at her without warning.

The capsizing was variously attributed to a heavy swell, or to there being no time to stop her engine before abandoning ship, so she was still under way when her boats were launched.

[77] These elicited no response, so at 16:00 hrs on 18 March the lifeboat reached St Mary's, Isles of Scilly by the survivors' own effort.

[80] The US Consul at Plymouth, England reported that the dead were five US citizens, five Spaniards, two Greeks, one Peruvian, one Puerto Rican, and one Venezuelan.

[81] On 17 March, the day after Vigilancia was sunk, U-boats stopped and sank to the cargo ship City of Memphis and the tanker Illinois.

In those two cases the U-boats had followed surfaced; forced the ship to heave to; and allowed the crew to abandon her without loss of life before sinking her.

[82] In Germany, writing in the Deutsche Tageszeitung, the former naval officer Ernst Graf zu Reventlow welcomed the sinkings.

"It is good that American ships have been obliged to learn that the German prohibition is effective and that there is no question of distinctive treatment for the United States...".

[83] About the same time as Reventlow's comments were published, either a U-boat or a mine sank the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey's tanker Healdton on 21 March.

During the congressional debate of the proposal, news came that a U-boat had sunk Aztec, causing the death of 28 of her crew, including 11 US citizens.