the first passenger ship sunk in WW1

The 14,349 gross ton steam ship Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, named after the German emperor of the time, was built in Stettin and launched in 1897.

She was the first liner to a have commercial wireless telegraphy system when the Marconi Company installed one in February 1900, the first German ship to win the Blue Riband and, 22 days after Britain declared war on Germany, the first passenger ship to be sunk in WW1, even if she was in use as an armed merchant cruiser at the time.

In August 1914 the ship was requisitioned by the Kaiserliche Marine or German Navy and fitted with six 10.5 cm (4 inch) guns and two 37 mm guns to act as an auxiliary cruiser and assigned to commerce raiding in the Atlantic.  After sparing two passenger ships because they were carrying many women and children, she sank two freighters before she herself was sunk on 26 August 1914. When refuelling off the shore of the then Spanish colony of Rio de Oro in western Africa she was attacked by the old British 6-inch gunned cruiser HMS Highflyer. Badly outgunned, the ship eventually ran out of ammunition. The crew abandoned and scuttled her in shallow water.

The flag flying from the stern is the German flag of the Second Reich which ended with the end of WW1.