Her first season with the MSC was not without difficulties; she struck a rock in the Straits of Mackinac and arrived at Chicago, Illinois, with a leak, and then ran aground above the Soo Locks on her way back to Minnesota.

[2] Due to fog, she ran aground again, this time on Knife Island Reef in Lake Superior, on June 2, 1902.

[4] At three-thirty in the afternoon of November 27, 1905, she was on her way out of Duluth, Minnesota, loaded with iron ore and towing the barge James Nasmyth.

After hours of fighting the storm, Humble decided to turn back to safe port in Two Harbors, Minnesota.

Her rudder tore off and the water pulled her prow out toward the open lake, then smashed her stern against the south pier.

The nine who remained aboard the after portion died of exposure during the night; one of the bodies in the after half had to be chopped out of solid ice.

[5] She did play the heroic part on a few occasions, however; on July 17, 1912, she rescued 19 men from the sinking wooden steamer New York in Lake St. Clair, and on the same day six years later she rescued the entire crew of the barge Commodore off South East Shoal in Lake Erie.