The SS Dresden was a British passenger ship which operated, as such, from 1897 to 1915. She is known as the place of the 1913 disappearance of German engineer Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the Diesel engine. The ship was built in 1897 by the Earle Company at Hull for the Great Eastern Railway. She operated on the North Sea route between Harwich and the Hook of Holland. She was renamed HMS Louvain in 1915 and was used by the Royal Navy in World War I. until her loss in 1918.