[2] Bonnington was partially dismantled in the 1950s, and later sank, making the vessel the largest freshwater wreck site in British Columbia.

Unusually for a sternwheeler, Bonnington was equipped with compound steam engines, which were manufactured by Polson Iron Works of Toronto, Ontario.

Bonnington would break the three-deck pattern and, with Nasookin and Sicamous become the only sternwheel steamer with four decks to run in the Pacific Northwest.

Also, while her steel hull gave her ice resistance that wooden-hulled vessels lacked, the winter was also a time of low water in the Narrows that separated the upper and lower Arrow Lakes.

[2] The years of World War I (1914–1918) were hard on the steamboats, as the young men that would otherwise man them or work at businesses in the area volunteered for military service, and travel and tourism fell off in general.

Bonnington and other steamers did carry troops recruited locally to military training, but this work could not make up for the general decline in business.

As railroads and roads entered the area, and people moved to the cities, business went into decline, so that by 1930, there were only three vessels running passenger service on the Arrow Lakes, the Bonnington, the Minto and the all-purpose propeller steamboat Columbia.

Bonnington with her large crew and high expenses, could not survive the Great Depression, which caused tourist traffic to fall off considerably.

Bonnington withdrawn from service after the season of 1931, and laid up at Nakusp, where the vessel remained for a long time and slowly deteriorated.

[2] Bonnington was able to serve as a spare parts source for the other vessels of her class, her boiler and smokestack being later installed in the sistership Nasookin, then being run as a ferry on Kootenay Lake.

When I was taking the remains of the Bonnington up to Beaton and we got around the Point-at Nakusp- and had her straightened out, I came across the big ledger with all the names of all the officers that were ever on her, plus the deckhands, firemen etc.

[1][6] In the 1990s, the wreck was located and explored by members of the Underwater Archaeology Society of British Columbia and found to be remarkably intact.