Amos Perkins Lord was among the last of the sailmakers to service the schooners, yachts and small craft that were at work or active around the turn of the 19th century on the coast of Maine. A.P. Lord’s life as a sailmaker spanned the very last years of a dependence on commercial sail power. At the time of his apprenticeship in the 1880s, sail power had not entirely given over to steam. Skilled workers in Maine's coastal communities long accustomed to shipbuilding, made the construction of larger and ever more powerful sailing vessels cost effective. Many Maine built sailing vessels remained busy moving Maine products; granite, lumber, ice and materials of all sorts, both long haul and short haul. Just one example of this was the Rockport-Rockland Lime Company. At the end of the 19th century it owned as many as a 150 schooners, transporting casks of lime for making mortar and plaster to Boston and beyond.

 

At the end of Mr. Lord's life, less than a dozen working schooners remained active in Penobscot Bay, carrying vacationing passengers in Capt. Frank Swift's patched up fleet of old work horses.

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