Improved roads, bridges, and automobiles reduced demand for ferry service in the Bay Area, and newer ships were optimized for transporting cars, so General Frisbie was retired in the late 1920s.

In 1937 and 1938 she sailed to Moser Bay on Kodiak Island, Alaska in the spring, and returned with cases of canned salmon in the fall.

As the 1920s drew to a close, Zephaniah's sons, who ran the company after their father's death in 1913, considered the strategic challenge of the automobile to the ferry business and decided to sell.

[9] Bellingham Bay Improvement Company owned both a lumber mill and waterfront real estate in the area, so both parties may have been involved.

[8] After a placid trip down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the ships were met by a sudden gale off Cape Flattery.

[15] At some point during her time in San Francisco Bay, she was modified to carry 12 cars, loading through a side door.

[4] General Frisbie's entrance into San Francisco operations was marked by an "owner's trial" excursion on June 12, 1901, which included a number of friends and invited guests of the Hatch Brothers.

[9] In normal operations, she and other Hatch steamers ran between pier 2 at the Mission Street Dock in San Francisco and her Vallejo terminal, near the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

For example, on July 4, 1923 she ran four-hour excursions around San Francisco Bay featuring dancing and refreshments for $1.50 per passenger.

[26] When General Frisbie began service in 1901 there were no electronic navigation aids, not even radios; the limit of maritime communications technology at the time was signal flags.

The thick fogs in San Francisco Bay meant that groundings and collisions were frequent in the local ferry fleet.

At 10:30 pm on October 19, 1903 General Frisbie was heading up the channel toward Vallejo while the steamer St Helena was sailing in the opposite direction for San Francisco.

[28] In a dense fog on October 3, 1912 General Frisbie, captained by Fred Olsen, hit the Southern Pacific freight steamer Iroquois.

General Frisbie sustained no damage in the mishap and was able to continue her run to San Francisco, but her passengers were "badly frightened".

On March 29, 1915 General Frisbie ran an excursion trip to this pier from Vallejo for Exposition dedication ceremonies.

The number of passengers on board was variously reported at the time from 175 to 300, but all accounts agree that there were at least 45 children from the Good Temple Orphans Home in Vallejo.

Captain Charles Sandhal of General Frisbie left his engines in gear so that the bow of his ship would continue to plug the hole in Sehome's side and delay the inevitable sinking.

[35] It so happened that a party of sailors from Mare Island Naval Shipyard was on board General Frisbie heading to a football game in Berkeley.

After all 173 passengers and crew[37] were rescued from Sehome, a tug towing a rock barge emerged from the fog and collided with General Frisbie's stern.

This blow wrenched her bow from the gash in the hull of Sehome, which promptly sank and came to rest on the mud bottom, awash to her upper deck.

The fact that she had limited capacity to carry cars was less important on this route since hundreds of workers from Seattle commuted to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton every day for work.

The board of Puget Sound Navigation Company, which ran the Black Ball Line, chose not to match the lower rate.

[40] Instead, it intervened with the Washington Department of Public Works, which regulated ferry service, in April 1930 to prevent Commander from operating.

[42] The Black Ball Line added the ferry Kalakala to the Seattle – Bremerton route on July 2, 1935, competing with Commander.

This had the effect of allowing Puget Sound Naval Shipyard employees to get to work, while cutting off car ferry service to Bremerton, which only the Black Ball ships provided.

Puget Sound Navigation Company responded to the unions' actions by acquiring its competitor's operations, including Commander.

After an agreement with the ferry unions, Commander was retired in favor of Kalakala and towed to moorings in Kirkland on Lake Washington to await her fate.

Suryan's, Inc. which owned the business was so short of cash that its pay-off checks to the crew of Commander at the end of the season bounced.

[24][45] Although it seems likely that Commander missed the 1939 fishing season after she was repossessed by Seattle First National Bank, by 1940 she was tied to the cannery dock again in Moser Bay.

[47] Another source reports that the diesel engine and fittings were removed from Commander in 1939 and the hull was towed to Kodiak, Alaska, where it was beached.