Though the Enterprise had successfully navigated those two canyons on her historic trip to Takla Lake thirty-six years earlier, the Charlotte's owners knew that in no ways guaranteed that a regular route could be maintained without great risk.

Local man, Captain DA Foster was to be her pilot and upon inspecting the canyons in late 1907, he petitioned the federal government for funds to remove the obstacles to navigation.

In light of these improvements and the news of the impending railway, the Charlotte's owners gave her an overhaul, widening the bores of her engine and replacing her old manual capstan with a powerful steam-driven one.

Captain Browne reacted quickly to the crisis, guiding the sternwheeler narrowly past a pile of rocks where she would have been torn open and immediately sank.

[1] After the near accident, Browne and Irving returned to Quesnel and put their own petition in to the government for funds, this time to blast away a large rock that was confining the current in the Cottonwood Canyon.

By that spring the Charlotte was joined by two other river steamers, the Quesnel, that Captain Foster had been planning, and the Nechacco, owned by the Fort George Lumber and Navigation Company.

Upon assessing the cost of repairing her, and knowing that the little pioneer steamer could not compete against the bigger and more modern BX, her owners decided that any further investment in her could not be justified and she was abandoned on the riverbank at Quesnel.