Oakland merchant John L. Davie utilized the Rosalie in 1894 to demonstrate that monopolistic and corrupt practices by the Southern Pacific Railroad's Big Four could be resisted.

He employed the vessel as a ferryboat competing against the established monopoly service across San Francisco Bay, but at first was blockaded by Southern Pacific ships.

D.B Jackson, then doing business as the Northwestern Steamship Company, to serve on Puget Sound with the older sidewheelers George E. Starr and Idaho.

The company ran six sailings a month from Seattle, to Mary Island, Metlakatla, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Juneau, Dyea, Haines Mission and Skagway with the Rosalie among other vessels.

[2] By 1900, the extreme boom for transport to the Klondike golf fields had faded, and Rosalie was returned to Puget Sound, this time as the first vessel in the ownership of Joshua Green.

In 1903, Captain Roberts was appointed master of the new inland steamship Clallam which soon thereafter sank in the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the loss of 54 lives, including all the women and children on board.

Rosalie was standing by at Colman Dock on May 19, 1912, when Flyer had extended her gangplank improperly, causing it to collapse and throw people that had been on it into the water.