Kronprinz Wilhelm was a German ocean liner built for Norddeutscher Lloyd, a shipping company now part of Hapag-Lloyd, by the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany (now Szczecin, Poland), in 1901. She was named after Crown Prince Wilhelm, son of the German Emperor Wilhelm II, and was a sister ship of Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse.

The ship had a varied career, starting off as a world-record-holding passenger liner, then as an auxiliary warship from 1914–1915 for the Imperial German Navy, sailing as a commerce raider for a year, and then interned in the United States when she ran out of supplies. When the US entered World War I, the US Government seized the ship and renamed USS Von Steuben, and served as a United States Navy troop transport until she was decommissioned. After the war, Von Steuben was turned over to the United States Shipping Board, where she remained in service until she was scrapped in 1923.

Kronprinz Wilhelm was launched on 30 March 1901. Her registered length was 637.3 ft (194.2 m), her beam was 66.3 ft (20.2 m) and her depth was 39.3 ft (12.0 m). Her tonnages were 14,908 GRT and 6,162 NRT. She twin screws propellers, each driven by a six-cylinder quadruple expansion engine. Between them her twin engines were rated at 3,534 NHP.

She started her transatlantic maiden voyage on 17 September 1901 from Bremerhaven via Southampton and Cherbourg to New York. She was one of the fastest and most luxurious liners on the North Atlantic and stayed on that run until 1914. Her total cost in 1901 was approximately $3.2 million, half a million more than her predecessor Kaiser Wilhelm der Große.

The ship had a Marconi wireless telegraph, and by 1913 her call sign was DKP. She had electric central heating, and 1,900 electric lamps. About 60 electric motors worked bridge cranes, fans, elevators, refrigerators and auxiliary machinery. Kronprinz Wilhelm had a control panel in the map room to close or open the 20 watertight doors. If a door was closed, this was shown by a lamp. This security system alone needed 3.2 km (2.0 mi) of special cables and 1.2 km (0.75 mi) of normal cables. At one point in 1907 the ship rammed an iceberg and suffered a crushed bow, but was still able to complete her voyage.

On 18 September 1901 Kronprinz Wilhelm was damaged on its maiden voyage from Cherbourg to New York by a huge rogue wave. The wave struck the ship head-on. In 1902, she was involved in two different collisions in the waters off Southampton. In the first, she collided with the cargo vessel Robert Ingham in foggy weather. The cargo ship sank, with two fatalities, but Kronprinz Wilhelm sustained little damage. On October 8, 1902, Kronprinz Wilhelm collided with a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Wizard. The two vessels were pulled into contact with each other when Wizard tried to pass the much larger Kronprinz Wilhelm. Wizard sustained heavy damage, but Kronprinz Wilhelm escaped relatively unharmed.

In September 1902, captained by August Richter, Kronprinz Wilhelm won the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing yet from Cherbourg to New York in a time of five days, 11 hours, 57 minutes, with an average speed of 23.09 kn (42.76 km/h; 26.57 mph).

In her time as a passenger liner, many famous international personalities sailed on Kronprinz Wilhelm. These included the lawyer and politician Lewis Stuyvesant Chanler (1903), the opera singer Lillian Blauvelt (1903), the theatrical manager and producer Charles Frohman (1904) who died in 1915 aboard RMS Lusitania; businessman John Jacob Astor (1906) who died in 1912 aboard RMS Titanic; the "most picturesque woman in America", Rita de Acosta Lydig, and her second husband, Captain Philip M. Lydig (1907); the author Lloyd Osbourne (1907); the star conductor Alfred Hertz (1909); the ballerina Adeline Genée (1908); the theatrical and opera producer Oscar Hammerstein together with the conductor Cleofonte Campanini and the opera singers Mario Sammarco, Giuseppe Taccani and Fernando Gianoli-Galetti (1909); and the multi-millionaire, politician and lawyer Samuel Untermyer (1910).