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In 1889, Amos moved to Bath to join his brother Harry S. Lord. Business directories of the time report that Harry had a shop established in 1885 on Union Wharf. During these 20 years in Bath, from 1885 through 1905, all or some combination of the sailmaking Lord brothers applied their trade. These former apprentices of their Uncle Sam Mugridge; Harry, Amos, Wilmont and Herbert, ultimately combined forces at their older brothers loft. |
| Bath was a good place to be if you were sailmaking in the 1880s. According to Lincoln P. Paine in his book DOWN EAST, shipyards in and around the Bath area launched 255 schooners and 62 square riggers during that decade, and it's probable that most all of their sails were made locally, divided among a number of shops employing a number of men. At this writing I have no record of sails for specific vessels that were made by the Lords, but it's certain that the brothers had a respectable share of what was going on at that time. A.P. Lord in his own words written later in his life for a newspaper article states that during those years in Bath, he and his brothers made sails for three, four, and five masted schooners. |
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| It was New England's ever increasing dependence on coal for industry and power generation that contributed to a demand for these large, mostly wooden schooners built economically by skilled Maine workers. |
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At the end of the 1900's, there were five major sailmaking shops operating in the city. Harry S. Lords business was listed among them, but all reference to the Lord Brothers in Bath were gone by 1912. Harry apparently bought out the William H. Clifford shop in 1904, and not long after this joined Walter G. Morey in Boston, where they had what appears to be a sizable sailmaking operation on 60 India Street. Here's more information about Harry S. Lord. |
| These were significant years for the profession. The end of the century brought the sewing machine into the sailmakers domain stirring resentment from workers threatened by the the labor saving technology with sometimes violent consequences. Sailmaker A.M. Cutler ( a Bath contemporary of the Lords)writes of arranging for police to be at his establishment the day his machines arrived. His decision to do this was influenced by recent incidences in New York. Sailmakers could not miss the writing on the wall. In the 1890s, the Bath area turned out 94 sizable schooners, far less than in the previous ten years, dwindling to just 22 built in the first decade of the 20th century. Undoubtedly this influenced the Lords and others to seek out greener pastures. Harry went on to Boston, and Amos relocated to Belfast. |
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© 2005 Grant Gambell