SS Arabic was a passenger steamship launched on 7 November 1908 as the SS Berlin and it was built by the A.G. Weser shipbuilding company in Germany. Her Gross Register Tonnage was advertised at 16,786. She made her maiden voyage on 1 May 1909 from New York to Genoa and Bremerhaven. In September 1914 she became an auxiliary cruiser with the German Navy as a minelayer. Having laid mines of the northern Irish coast she took refuge in Trondheim with storm damage.