SS Imperator / RMS Berengaria

SS Imperator (known as RMS Berengaria for most of her career) was a German ocean liner built for the Hamburg America Line, launched in 1912. At the time of her completion in June 1913, she was the largest passenger ship in the world, surpassing the new White Star liner Olympic.

Imperator was the first of a trio of successively larger Hamburg America liners that included Vaterland (later the United States Liner Leviathan) and Bismarck (later the White Star Line Majestic) all of which were seized as war reparations.

Imperator served for 14 months on HAPAG's transatlantic route, until the outbreak of World War I, after which she remained in port in Hamburg. After the war, she was briefly commissioned into the United States Navy as USS Imperator (ID-4080) and employed as a transport, returning American troops from Europe. Following her service with the U.S. Navy, Imperator was purchased jointly by Britain's Cunard Line and White Star Line as part of war reparations, due to the loss of the RMS Lusitania, where she sailed as the flagship RMS Berengaria for the last 20 years of her career. William H. Miller wrote that "despite her German heritage and the barely disguised Teutonic tone of her interiors, she was thought of in the 1920s and 30s as one of Britain's finest liners."