Builder: Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast, Ireland.
Completed: April 1905.
Gross tonnage: 21329.
Dimensions: 687ftx 74ft. Depth 52ft.
Engines: Two four-cylinder, quadruple expansion.
Screws: Twin.
Watertight bulkheads: Twelve.
Decks: Five.
Normal speed:17.75 knots.
Passenger accommodation: 693 cabin and 1240 tourist and third class.
Built for the Hamburg-America Line and christened Amerika. Seized by the United States at Boston, Massachusetts, in April 1917. Converted to a transport with her name anglicised to America in October 1918.
On the night before entering service as a troopship the America sank at her pier at New York when some valves had been left open accidentally.
She was refloated and used for repatriation work rather than trooping.
Transferred to the US Mail Line in July 1921 and subsequently to the United States Lines on August 31, 1921.
Engaged in the New York—Channel ports—Bremen service year-round. Rebuilt in 1926 after being almost completely destroyed by fire at Newport News, Virginia.
Returned to her owners, the US Department of Commerce, in 1931 and laid up in the James River, Virginia, until recommissioned for troop work in 1941 under the name of Edmund B. Alexander.
Refitted for oil fuel in 1942 and her two funnels replaced by a single squat one.
Laid up in the Hudson River after the war as a reserve ship.
Sold for scrap at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1956 to the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and broken up by 1957.
Note: The America was the first ship to have an a la carte restaurant and ranked very high in her day as a luxury liner.
The illustrations are labels. I don't think this vessel has appeared on a postage stamp.
North Atlantic Passenger Liners since 1900 by N T Cairis