Daniel Webster

Daniel Webster was an American steamboat built in 1853 for passenger service on the coast of Maine. When new, she was the largest and fastest steamer in Maine coastal service, and widely considered to be the finest. Daniel Webster spent her first eight years operating between the Maine cities of Portland and Bangor. With the outbreak of the American Civil War in April 1861, she was chartered by the United States War Department and used as a troop transport. In early 1862, she was assigned to the United States Sanitary Commission and converted into a hospital boat. Dubbed Daniel Webster No. 2 to distinguish her from another chartered vessel of the same name, she was used to transfer wounded soldiers from the Peninsula Campaign battlefront to hospitals in the rear. Later, under the name Expounder, she was again used as a troop transport. In between her four wartime stints in government service, she made brief returns to passenger service in Maine. In 1864, Expounder began running in passenger service between Boston, Massachusetts, and Bath, Maine, soon thereafter resuming her original name. By 1867, competition from a newer steamboat caused her to be withdrawn from the route, and she lay idle for a time. In 1871, she was sold to a railroad company, who employed her between Baltimore, Maryland, and West Point, Virginia, but this service too lasted only a couple of seasons. In 1872, Daniel Webster was sold to a Canadian firm. Renamed Saguenay, she ran on Quebec's St. Lawrence and Saguenay rivers, taking tourists on fishing and sightseeing tours as well as transporting freight and livestock. After 12 years on this route, she was destroyed by an accidental fire in September 1884 at Pointe au Pic, Quebec.