K?nig Wilhelm II, a 9410 gross ton passenger liner, was built at Stettin, Germany, in 1907. She operated for the Hamburg-Amerika Line between Europe and South America until the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, at which time she was laid up at Hoboken, New Jersey. The ship was seized when the U.S. entered the "Great War" in April 1917. Though her German crew had sabotaged her machinery, she was repaired and entered U.S. Navy commissioned service as USS K?nig Wilhelm II late in August 1917. Renamed Madawaska at the beginning of September, and later assigned the registry number ID 3011, for more than a year she was actively engaged in carrying U.S. troops to the European war zone. During this time, Madawaska made ten trans-Atlantic voyages, transporting nearly 12,000 men.

With the signing of the Armistice on 11 November 1918, Madawaska's routing was reversed, and she made seven more trips to bring home some 17,000 veterans of the European fighting. Her last such voyage was completed in August 1919. She was decommissioned in early September and transferred to the War Department. She then began more than two decades as an Army Transport, serving as USAT Madawaska until 1922 and thereafter as USAT U.S. Grant.

In June 1941, the ship was given back to the Navy and commissioned as USS U.S. Grant (AP-29). For the next three and a half years she operated in the Pacific, primarily between the U.S. West Coast and Alaska, but also making trips to Hawaii. On 20 July 1942 she avoided an submarine torpedo attack while en route to Dutch Harbor, and in 1943 she participated in the operations to recapture the Aleutians islands of Attu and Kiska. U.S. Grant served in the Caribbean area during the first part of 1945, then returned to the Pacific in September. She made one round-trip passage between San Francisco, California, and Okinawa during the next two months. Decommissioned in mid-November, soon after completing that voyage, she was returned to the War Department, who turned her over to the Maritime Commission for layup. U.S. Grant was sold in February 1948 and scrapped at Baltimore, Maryland.