Tonnage: 13,440 tons gross, Length: 600.7’, Beam: 65.5’
Builder: Harland & Wolff, Belfast
Launch Date: December 12, 1901, Maiden Voyage: May 17, 1902
Destruction: Torpedoed January 30, 1918
Operated by A.T.L.: 1900 - 1917.

Notes: Twin screws, quadruple expansion engines by builder with cylinders of 30″, 43″, 63″ & 89″, stroke 60″. Steam pressure 180 lbs, 1,227 n.h.p. 16 knots, Passengers: 250 first class, Depth of hold: 39-5’, Port of registry: Belfast.

Minnetonka and her sisters were among the first ships to be fitted for wireless telegraphy, and at least two of them were clearly using their equipment by February of 1902 for on the 5th of that month the New York Times reported Minneapolis’s wireless communication with Minnetonka, which had just defeated the Etruria in a chess match by wireless telegraphy. It would seem that a lot of fun was being had with this new toy! Two years later when the Journal of the Telegraph named all of the passenger ships fitted with Marconi wireless apparatus there were still only 32 vessels on the list. The call letters for Minnetonka were “MMK.”

In mid June 1907 Mark Twain (Sam Clemens) traveled to England on board Minneapolis to receive an honorary degree from Oxford University. He returned home from this, his last European trip, on Minnetonka in July. Twain befriended several children on the voyage, but in his own words “made a particular pet of little Dorothy Quick,” an 11-year old returning home to Brooklyn with her mother. Dorothy became a frequent houseguest of Twain’s, both at his Tuxedo Park home, in New York City, and in Redding, Connecticut, and their friendship lasted until his death in 1910. Quick became a writer and poet herself, and her book Mark Twain and Me: A Little Girl’s Friendship With Mark Twain formed the basis of a TV movie in 1991.

Minnetonka was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-64 40 miles from Malta on January 30, 1918, with the loss of four lives. The ship was carrying mail from Port Said to Marseilles at the time and there were no troops aboard.