The passenger ship Mohawk was launched by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in 1925.  The Ward Line used her in the popular Havana, Cuba, run with stops in Progreso and Vera Cruz, Mexico.  She was pressed into service after the Ward Line lost two previous passenger liners to grounding and fire.

Her last cruise departed from Lower Manhattan on a cold January afternoon in 1935, heading due south toward Cuba.  She lagged along the New Jersey coast for a compass calibration and was overtaken by the much slower Norwegian tanker Talisman.  Suddenly, the Mohawk turned and veered across the tanker's course.  The Talisman's bow plunged deeply into the Mohawk's port side, creating a huge gash in the liner's hull.  Taking on water and listing badly, she sank in less than an hour.

The Mohawk name is not a lucky one.  In 1925 the Clyde Liner Mohawk caught fire and sank in Delaware Bay.  Her replacement (also named Mohawk) collided with the Old Dominion steamer Jefferson in heavy fog.  A Coast Guard cutter named Mohawk was previously rammed by a tramp steamer and sunk off the New Jersey Coast in 1917.  Despite all this, the new Coast Guard cutter Mohawk was under construction in 1935 to patrol the very waters where the Ward Line ship was lost.