Antonio Julia da Costa, the owner of the Portuguese shipping company Joao Baptista Angelo da Costa and Co., had recently lost his steamship Paquete Lusitano (which provided the Lisbon-Oporto route) and so arranged to purchase a replacement steamer from Liverpool. The two-year-old St. Patrick was sold to his company and ran the route of the lost steamer. She was renamed Restaurador Lusitano (sometimes written as Luzitano), which meant "restored Lusitano"- or, in other words, 'replacement for the earlier ship Paquete Lusitano'. She left on her maiden voyage as the Restaurador Lusitano on 1/2 March and called at Lisbon to pick up 30 passengers, then arrived at Oporto around a day later. On her second voyage, she sailed Oporto-Belém in just 17 hours (an average of ). However on two occasions, in bad weather, she sailed the route in 40 and 43 hours. In her first 8 months, she carried over 4,000 passengers. Disappointingly, she was described by a traveller in 1827 as poor- her engines were not very powerful and supposedly only doing when sailing against the wind, which meant she took twice as long as the advertised 24 hours to travel the route. In summer 1828, she briefly returned to Liverpool for repairs. Later that year, civil war broke out in Portugal. In 1832, due to a siege in Oporto, the Restaurador Lusitano was unable to continue her passenger service and was chartered to the Absolutionists.
