Her owners brought her north to compete with the "Eliza Anderson". The Wrights bested them, by lowering the fare to Victoria to fifty cents, with free meals. This drove "Enterprise" off the run after six months, and in February 1862, Captain W.A. Mowat paid $60,000 to buy her for the Hudson's Bay Company. The Anderson's owners bought the Enterprise's walking-beam engine and used it to repower their boat. Another would-be competitor, the "Josie McNear", similarly faltered in her efforts to compete with the "Anderson". D.B. Finch, once the purser on the vanquished "Enterprise", shifted over to the "Anderson", and later became a part-owner and master. Captain Finch had a head for figures, and became one of leading bankers in the Washington Territory, conducting finance at every landing called at by the "Anderson". Counties in those days were poorly funded, and paid their bills not in cash money, but "warrants", that is to say, paper promises to pay. Finch bought these up for 20 cents on the dollar (he paid more for better quality debts) and eventually collected most of the principal and interest from them  When things were winding down for the Anderson on the Olympia-Victoria route, she was tied up to Percival Dock in Olympia for some time, until the Cassiar Gold Rush in northern British Columbia seemed to offer a chance to make money. She was then was fixed up sufficiently to make voyages as far north as Wrangell, Alaska. When the Cassiar rush gave out, the "Anderson" was returned to Seattle, where she lay between 1877 and 1883, eventually sinking at her moorings. In 1883, Captain Wright raised the "Anderson", pumped her out, cleaned her up a bit, and put her on the run from Seattle to New Westminster, British Columbia, with Captain E.W. Holmes as her master and O.O. Denny her chief engineer. By this time, the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company was making its bid to monopolize all water and rail transport in the state of Oregon and the Washington Territory. This brought on a rate war with the monopoly's newer sidewheeler, "George E. Starr", under Captain George Roberts. In April 1884, "Anderson" was run hard on the Victoria run against the Oregon company's "Olympian", a huge and expensive-to-run sidewheeler.