SS Princess Alice

SS Princess Alice was the name born by a German mail ship from 1904 to 1917. Built in 1900, she'd originally been christened the SS Kiautschou for the Hamburg America Line. She was traded to North German Lloyd in 1904, and called Princess Alice. She sailed both transatlantic and Far East mail routes until the outbreak of World War I, when she was interned in the neutral port of Cebu in the Philippines. The United States seized her in 1917, rechristened her the USS Princess Matoika. She remained an American ship, being rechristened under new names three more times before she was scrapped in 1933.

SS Princes Alice in "Last Flight of the Swan of the East"

While flying over the Indian Ocean, the German leviathan Emden rendezvoused with the Princess Alice, hoping to secure more coal from the mail ship. Her skipper informed Karl von Müller of the Emden that the Princess Alice was having problems with its boilers and had just enough coal to get to Batavia. While Müller had his doubts, he gave mail to the skipper from the Emden's crew.

Müller's first officer, Hellmuth von Mücke, believed the skipper of the Princess Alice was lying, and that the Emden should bomb the mail boat.