SS Nieuw Amsterdam was a ship built at Belfast by Harland and Wolff. It was launched in 1905 and on April 7, 1906 made its first voyage to New York from Rotterdam. The Nieuw Amsterdam was fitted with sails, but they were never deployed; it was the first quadruple expansion powered ship of the Holland America Line. In 1914 the ship brought almost 1,700 United States citizens back to the states from Europe at the outbreak of World War I. It was not used again until 1917 when it took 2,300 Dutch seamen from the United States back to Holland. The ship was renovated in 1918 and overhauled in 1925 to a "cabin/tourist configuration". It became the first ship to bring immigrants to the large new Canadian immigration terminal Pier 21 at Halifax, Nova Scotia on March 28, 1928 and made 31 voyages to