While reading A.A. Hoehling’s _The Great War at Sea_ (New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell Company, 1965), I came across the following:

Britain seemed to be winning the naval phase of the great war.
Germany’s raiders, one by one, were being knocked off the seas
or compelled to give themselves up because their supply lines
had been cut.

The Kronprinz Wilhelm, for example, arrived in Newport News
in April, after sinking fifteen merchant ships, aggregating 58,000
tons. Unable to continue her patrols without fuel or ammunition,
she was interned beside another, but less successful, armed liner,
the Prinz Eitel Friedrich. Captain Paul Thierfelder, who had been
given permission to “lay up the ship” after a remarkable 250-day
cruise, could for the remainder of the war devote his crew’s energies
to the oft-interrupted rat hunt (The Kronprinz Wilhelm had been
infested with rats from a previous cargo. Thierfelder was forced to
dispatch his crew into the cargo holds after the rats drove the liner’s
cats, as well as several ferrets purchased in New York, into the
crew’s quarters.)

On board were a number of small English sports cars that had been
removed from the holds of one of his victims, sunk by the clumsy
method of ramming, one of his favorite tactics. On calm, quiet days,
he had allowed his men to race the little cars around the broad
promenade deck of the spacious Hamburg-American liner. Now, he took
them ashore for less restricted courses (90-91).

Three questions:

(1). What happened to the Kronprinz Wilhelm and the Prinz Eitel
Friedrich after the United States entered the war? I assume that they
were taken into naval service alongside other interned German merchant
vessels. If so, what were their new names and ultimate fates?

(2). Were the interned crews treated as enemy aliens or POWs following
the U.S. declaration of war?

(3). Was the Kronprinz Wilhelm ACTUALLY large enough to allow for auto
racing on board? Would U.S. authorities have allowed Thierfelder to take his
crew ashore to stage such races?

Take care.

Edward Wittenberg
ewitten507@aol.com