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is a city in Sagadahoc County, Maine, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 9,266. It is the county seat of Sagadahoc County. Located on the Kennebec River, Bath is a port of entry with a good harbor. The city is popular with tourists, many drawn by its fine 19th-century architecture. It is home to the Bath Iron Works and Heritage Days Festival, held annually on the Fourth of July weekend.
Bath is part of the Portland–South Portland–Biddeford, Maine Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Abenaki Indians called the area Sagadahoc, meaning "mouth of big river." It was a reference to the Kennebec River, which Samuel de Champlain explored in 1605. Popham Colony was established in 1607 downstream, together with Fort St. George. The settlement would fail due to a lack of leadership and harsh weather, but the colonists built the first oceangoing vessel constructed by English shipwrights in the New World, the
. It provided them passage back to England.
The next settlement at Sagadahoc was about 1660, when land titles were purchased from an Indian sagamore known as Robinhood.
Incorporated as part of Georgetown in 1753, Bath was set off and incorporated as a town on February 17, 1781. It was named by the postmaster, Dummer Sewell, after Bath in Somerset, England. In 1844, a portion of the town was set off to create West Bath. On June 14, 1847, Bath was incorporated as a city, and in 1854 designated county seat. Land would be annexed from West Bath in 1855.
Several industries developed in the city, including the manufacture of lumber, iron and brass, with trade in ice and coal. But Bath is renowned for shipbuilding, which began here in 1743 when Jonathan Philbrook and his sons built 2 vessels. Since then, roughly 5,000 vessels have been launched in the area, which at one time had more than 200 shipbuilding firms. Bath became the nation's fifth largest seaport by the mid-1800s, producing clipper ships which sailed to ports around the world. The last commercial enterprise to build wooden ships in the city was the Percy & Small Shipyard, which was acquired for preservation in 1971 by the Maine Maritime Museum. But the most famous shipyard is the Bath Iron Works, founded in 1884 by Thomas W. Hyde. It has built hundreds of wooden and steel vessels, mostly warships for the U.S. Navy. During World War II, Bath Iron Works launched a new ship every 17 days. The shipyard is a major regional employer, and operates today as a division of the General Dynamics Corporation.
The city is noted for fine Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate architecture, including the 1858 Custom House and Post Office designed by Ammi B. Young. Bath is sister city to Shariki (now Tsugaru) in Japan, where the locally-built full rigged ship
was wrecked in 1889. Scenes from the movies