Her front was clad with a rounded iron forefoot which could be pushed up onto ice floes so the ship's weight could break through.

The Wisconsin and her sister ship Michigan were the first double-hulled iron steamers on the Great Lakes.

On May 27, 1907, the ship caught fire again; the steamers Kansas, E. G. Kerr, and Saxona rescued most of the people on board, but four crew members and one passenger perished.

[4] During World War I, the Crosby was commandeered by the United States Navy and served in New York harbor as a convalescent hospital ship named the General Robert M. O'Reilly after Robert Maitland O'Reilly, a former Surgeon General of the United States Army.

Under the command of Captain Dougal Morrison, the freighter was carrying passengers, automobiles, and machine tools.