After a busy career in the East Indies, Pacific, Australia and Canada, she was sold for breaking in 1914 and was burnt at Burrard Inlet in British Columbia.

Egeria was constructed of an iron frame sheathed with teak and copper (hence 'composite'), and powered by a two-cylinder horizontal compound-expansion steam engine.

This engine, provided by Humphrys, Tennant & Co.,[1] drove a single 11-foot (3.4 m) diameter screw and generated an indicated 1,011 horsepower (754 kW).

In 1875, Egeria, commanded by Commander Ralph Lancelot Turton, proceeded to Perak (in modern Malaysia), as one of a squadron of six ships under Captain Alexander Buller with his senior officer's pennant in HMS Modeste, to take part in an expedition against the murderers of Mr James Birch, the British Resident in Perak.

[9] Egeria was primarily involved in resurveying settled areas of the British Columbia coast to create modern charts on a larger scale.

After many years in the Surveying Service, in November 1911 she was put up to public auction at Esquimalt, and sold to the Vancouver branch of the Navy League for £1,416.