Nathaniel Lord Thompson the Man: The Name Behind the Ship

Born in 1811, Nathaniel Lord Thompson would become one of the youngest shipmasters and one of Kennebunk’s most successful shipbuilders and shipyard owners. The Ocean King built in his shipyard in 1874 was the largest vessel at the time of its launching and was the first four-masted vessel built in Kennebunk. Thompson married three times: Jane Stone Lord, Elizabeth Watts Lord and Nancie Hackett—his first two wives died young. Thompson’s Greek temple-style home built at 23 Summer Street stayed in his family for generations and exists to this day.

One of Maine’s most notable maritime historians, Lincoln Colcord, wrote of Thompson:

Here is the record of what one man did to drive forward the proud enterprise of American maritime supremacy. It is not a romance; it is a statement of facts, of things that happened. There were many such men, and together they did it all. The men made the era. They knew their way about the world, and the lore of their trade. They built beautiful and efficient ships, and made their living from them; out of the proceeds they built beautiful houses, lived largely and ably, helped sustain sterling communities, and laid down the substantial foundations on which the life of the Maine coast rests today.

Thompson died in 1889 and is buried across the street from The Brick Store Museum in Hope Cemetery.