USS Marcellus was an iron schooner-rigged collier United States Navy Auxiliary ship in service with the United States Navy from 1898 to 1910. She participated in the U.S. Navy's first efforts in coaling warships while underway at sea. She was rammed by a commercial steamer in the early morning hours of 9 August 1910 and sank that afternoon without loss of life.

The Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), known in English as the Hamburg America Line, was a transatlantic shipping enterprise established in Hamburg, in 1847. Among those involved in its development were prominent citizens such as Albert Ballin, Adolph Godeffroy, Ferdinand Laeisz, Carl Woermann, August Bolten, and others, and its main financial backers were Berenberg Bank and H. J. Merck & Co. It soon developed into the largest German, and at times the world's largest, shipping company, serving the market created by German immigration to the United States and later, immigration from Eastern Europe. On 1 September 1970, after 123 years of independent existence, HAPAG merged with the Bremen-based North German Lloyd to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.