(MARITIME) Ledger kept by Brooklyn shipbuilder and dry dock

Sale 2444 - Lot 208

Price Realized: $ 1,750

?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price

Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500

(MARITIME.) Ledger kept by Brooklyn shipbuilder and dry dock operator Theodore S. Bird. [23], 177, [29] manuscript pages including index. Folio, original calf, minor wear; minimal wear to contents. New York, 1879-85

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Additional Details

Theodore Sansbury Bird (1828-1905) was a shipbuilder with a dry dock at the foot of India Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The bulk of their business was with working vessels, for example on tugboats owned by the Greenpoint Lighterage Company (page 37, 66-67), as well as work for several ferry companies. Standard Oil and its subsidiary Charles Pratt & Co. were regular customers for their tankers and barges (pages 6, 16-18, 55, 72-73, 114-115, 162). However, the ledger records, among thousands of other transactions, $1905 for work done in 1884 on Pierre Lorillard's famed steam yacht Radha (page 152), one of the first vessels to make Newport, RI a pleasure yachting destination. Jabez Bostwick, a Standard Oil partner, had work done on oil barges, but also on his steam yacht Orienta (page 45). with--a related unbound ledger for accounts between Bird and the firm of Bird & Boggs, his former partnership with the late William Boggs, 1879-1888. 25 pages, moderate wear and a blank piece of Bird's letterhead.