"Bristol" made her maiden voyage in June 1867, and for the next two years was to maintain the run from New York to Bristol, Rhode Island, as part of the Narragansett Steamship Company's Bristol Line.In 1869, the Narragansett Steamship Company merged with the Boston, Newport and New York Steamboat Company, and "Bristol" and her sister ship "Providence" thus joined the latter Company's Fall River Line.