Kennedy put Athlon on the popular Seattle-Port Orchard (Navy Yard) Route, in competition with Joshua Green's boat, the Inland Flyer.

Kennedy and Joshua Green reached a deal to end competition between their two boats, fixing rates on the route as was usual with these anti-competitive agreements.

Kennedy and Joshua Green's Puget Sound Navigation Company drew closer together and eventually merged.

[3] In January 1904, the steamer Clallam and 50 of her passengers were lost en route to Victoria crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

[4] Steamship inspectors cracked down and fined a large number of steamers, including Athlon, $500 and more for operating without fog horns, signal flares or rockets, fire axes or proper life-saving equipment.

Political pressure increased after the sinking of the RMS Titanic which foundered in the North Atlantic with a large loss of lives due to too few lifeboats.

The owners calculated that based on the number of passengers that Athlon was licensed to carry, she would have to be equipped with 19 lifeboats, this on a steamboat only 112 feet (34 m) long.

Using this and other tactics, the steamboat owners of Puget Sound and the rest of the country were able to stall passage of the Seamen's Act until 1915.

In 1914, the Moe Brothers, with backers on Bainbridge Island and around Liberty Bay, bought Athlon and put her on the route, where she ran for the next six years.

[8] On July 30, 1914, Athlon and the coastal liner Admiral Farragut were moored in Seattle at the pier of the Grand Trunk Pacific, immediately to the north of Colman Dock.