SS Burdigala was an ocean liner that sailed the Atlantic Ocean from 1898 until World War I. The ship was built as the Kaiser Friedrich in 1898 for Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL), a German shipping line. Designed to break the speed record for a transatlantic liner and thereby win the Blue Riband, the Kaiser Friedrich never achieved the necessary speeds. After a short career with NDL and an equally short period of service with NDL's main German competitor, the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft (Hamburg America Line, or HAPAG), the ship was mothballed for a decade. After being sold to the French shipping line Compagnie de Navigation Sud-Atlantique, it re-entered service as SS Burdigala. In 1916, while en route from Thessaloniki to Toulon, the liner struck a mine laid by the Ger