ussimperatorid4080

The eagle was later removed and she chnaged to US and the UK owners and changed her name see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperator_%28ship%29

The eagle's wings were torn off during an Atlantic storm, in early 1914. Rather than restore them, the company removed the entire figurehead.

Picture of figurehead (or possibly of a model) with wings:

and one that is definitely on the ship

The damage was on a trans-Atlantic crossing from Bremen to New York, arriving in New York on March 19, 1914. See next day's NYT: query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30716FD3A5B13738...

Thanks all, for your information on the figurehead and when it was damaged. We will add some of it to the image description when we update.

"SS Imperator was an ocean liner built for the Hamburg America Line (Hamburg Amerikanische Paketfahrt Aktien Gesellschaft, or HAPAG), launched in 1912." "During World War I, the ship remained in port in Hamburg. After the war, she was briefly commissioned into the United States Navy as USS Imperator (ID-4080) and employed as a transport, returning American troops from Europe." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Imperator

This may be the arrival of the Imperator in New York Harbor on May 23, 1919. Among a group of 8 steamers that arrived that day bringing 34,000 troops back from Europe. query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F03EFD8163AE0...

The New-York tribune., June 01, 1919, Image 47 printed a photo of the Imperator with the caption: "The second largest ship in the world, the former German liner Imperator, which lay in the mud off Hamburg, for nearly five years, was one of eight transports to land 27,309 returning Yanks here last week - the biggest number to arrive in a single day." chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-06-01/ed-...

On June 20, 1919 the President-Elect Epitácio Pessoa of Brazil arrived on the Imperator in Hoboken, after he was transferred from the disabled French cruiser Jeanne d'Arc. Four destroyers acted as escort up the bay to Hoboken. New-York tribune., June 21, 1919, Page 13, col. 1-3 chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-06-21/ed-... The date on a nearby photo of the Imperator is 6/20/19: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/30902527105/ So the photo shows possibly this scene. Pessoa, photographed at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/30902529945/

The Imperator in 1913: www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/3532862307/

Typo: caption on photo says "boarding tuG" (as in tugboat)

Here is the LOC's Flickr file on the IMPERATOR: www.flickr.com/search/?q=imperator&w=8623220@N02

rjones0856: Thanks for catching the typo. We'll fix it next time we update.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Imperator