Decommissioned by the U.S. Navy, the United States Shipping Board sold her back to the North German Lloyd line, where she saw mercantile service until being scrapped in 1932.

She was launched as Prinzess Irene on 19 June 1900 by Aktiengesellschaft Vulkan, Stettin, Germany for North German Lloyd Lines.

With the outbreak of World War I in August, she was stranded in New York since the British Royal Navy controlled the North Atlantic.

She remained there until seized by the United States by Executive Order 2651 on 30 June 1917, under the authority prescribed in the Enemy Vessel Confiscation Joint Resolution passed on 12 May 1917.

Through the rest of the war and for nearly a year after the Armistice, Pocahontas served as a troop transport, completing eighteen round trips to Europe.

Captain Kalbus commenced zig-zag courses, and then at full speed drew away from the submarine, probably SM U-151, about twenty minutes after the attack began.

Pocahontas decommissioned at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on 7 November 1919 and was handed over to the United States Shipping Board for sale.

It was later reported that the vessel had been subject to sabotage and that some of the crew "began to threaten the commander and to damage the machinery and the electric light apparatus and even attempt ... to sink the steamer"[6] Just before entering Naples, the assistant engineer drowned when he jumped overboard.

[11] Although she was due to sail for New York on 31 July,[11] the ship was ordered to stay in port pending payment of debts incurred in relation to the repair work.

[3] The then future Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, was on board Pocahontas in May 1921, while emigrating from the United States to Palestine.

[19] When the United States Mail Steamship Company went into liquidation in 1922, the ship was sold back to its original owners, North German Lloyd and renamed Bremen.