Early in the morning of 11 April 1915, she stopped off Cape Henry, Virginia, and took on a pilot. At 10:12 that morning, she dropped anchor off Newport News, and ended her cruise, during which she steamed and destroyed just under of Allied shipping. She and her crew were interned, the ship was laid up at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Portsmouth, and her crew lived in a camp nearby, as "guests". During their internment, the crews of these vessels—numbering about 1,000 officers and men—built in the yard—from scrap materials—a typical German village named "Eitel Wilhelm", which attracted many visitors.