the first ship to warn of icebergs. HAPAG's general director, Albert Ballin, believed that safety, size, comfort and luxury would always win out over speed. Thus he conceived the three largest liners yet to be built, named , and Bismarck. First World War The Imperator and the Vaterland were briefly in service before the First World War. In 1914, the Vaterland was caught in port at Hoboken, New Jersey at the outbreak of World War I and interned by the United States. She was seized, renamed Leviathan after the declaration of war on Germany in 1917, and served for the duration and beyond as a troopship. In 1917, its liner Allemannia was "torpedoed by German submarine near Alicante"; two people were lost. Postwar reparations After the war, the Vaterland/Leviathan was retained by the Americans as war reparations. In 1919 Vaterlands sister ships – Imperator and the unfinished Bismarck – were handed over to the allies as war reparations to Britain. They were sold to the Cunard Line and White Star Line respectively, and renamed Berengaria and Majestic. A ship chain in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey is identified by the historic society as belonging to either the Vaterland or Imperator. It was acquired in 1921, likely during refurbishments, and now lines a portion of the Boulevard. In 1939, the HAPAG liner was unable to find a port in Cuba, the United States, or Canada willing to accept the more than 950 Jewish refugees on board and had to return to Europe. On 9 April 1940, when German warships attacked Kristiansand, Norway, during Operation Weserübung (the opening assault of the Norwegian Campaign), the HAPAG freighter sailed into the crossfire between the warships and Norwegian coastal artillery. She was holed and sunk, and her crew briefly became prisoners of war. Later years The Hamburg America Line lost almost the entirety of its fleet twice, as a result of World Wars I and II. In 1970, the company merged with its longstanding rival, Norddeutscher Lloyd of Bremen, to establish the present-day company Hapag-Lloyd. Fleet List See also Holland America Line Norwegian America Line Scandinavian America Line Swedish American Line References External links Fleet information The history of the Hamburg-America Line Historic photos of Hoboken and Hamburg America Line ports Passenger Lists from the Hamburg-Amerika Linie GG Archives Hamburg-Amerika Line ships This collection contains 16 photographs depicting ship interior and exterior views of Hamburg-Amerika Line's