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Larry S. Glatz

Publication Date

10-1-2021

Document Type

Article

First Page

37

Last Page

53

Abstract

Steam technology was both a product and a driver of the rapidly evolving economy of America in the early nineteenth century. Although steam boating in Maine originated on the Kennebec, the technology soon expanded to Portland. After the arrival of the city’s first steamboat in 1822, increasing passenger and freight traffic required larger and faster vessels. Through the first decade of the business, the steamers which served Portland were often cast-offs from earlier operations in New York. In 1835, however, local investors convinced themselves a first-rate locally built craft could be profitable. Initially successful, the steamboat Portland struggled against growing competition in the packet trade. Then as a newer steam-driven technology—the railroad— rolled from Boston into Portland in 1842, the boat became surplus and she was sold to a company in New Orleans. Eventually, her usefulness exhausted, she was abandoned and sank into the bay of Indianola, Texas.

Entering a challenging market developed over the prior decade by Captain Seward Porter’s Kennebec Steam Navigation Company, the original steamer Portland appeared as a model of local enterprise. After just a dozen years in Maine, however, she disappeared as a victim of the changing market she had been built to satisfy. This article describes the business environment into which the Portland was born, the steamer’s life in the local economy and her passing as a casualty of market change.

The author earned the degrees of A.B. from Dartmouth and M.A.T. from Harvard. His involvement in computer technology as an educator led him to a career as director of management information services for Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway, Maine, and later for a national healthcare rights organization. As a student of the history and culture of nineteenth-century Maine, he has compiled and edited a number of works on the subject. He chaired the 2005 Oxford County Bicentennial Commission, and he is the recipient of Maine Historical Society’s 2006 James Phinney Baxter award for historical writing and of its 2014 Neal W. Alen Jr. award for historical research. His most recent work is Diggio, Haybis Korpus & E Plewrisy Unicorn! The Thinkin’ and Doin’ of Ethan Spike, of Hornby, Oxford County, Maine (July 2021), during the compilation of which he first noticed the original steamer Portland chugging into Casco Bay.

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