Downes F. Curtis, a lifelong resident of the town of Oxford on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, achieved considerable renown for the numerous high-quality sails that he created for various types of vessels over the years. “He was certainly a premier sailmaker on the Eastern Shore, I guess one of the few black sailmakers,” said Douglas Hanks Jr., a board member of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, at the time of Curtis’s death in 1996. Hanks further stated, “He was a very, very talented sailmaker. He was very well respected in the town and very well respected in the sailing world.”
Curtis was born in Oxford in 1911. He learned the craft of sailmaking from a maritime artisan named Dave Pritchett, who had moved from his native England to Maryland. Curtis was only 15 years old when he began making sails and, after Pritchett passed away in 1936, he went into business for himself. His younger brother Albert worked alongside him in cutting and creating sails in a building in Oxford that had once served as their school.
“Every black in town attended school there back then,” recalled their sister Agnes Washington in a 2001 interview with the Eastern Shore-based newspaper Star-Democrat. “All nine Curtis children attended classes at the schoolhouse where our mother had been a teacher.” (The accompanying photo of this schoolhouse-turned-sail loft, which is now a private residence, was taken during the summer of 2025.)
Downes F. Curtis ultimately created sails for everyone from local oysterman working in that region to recreational yachtsmen living and traveling well beyond the Eastern Shore. In a 1961 interview with the Washington, DC-based Evening Star, Curtis asserted that his sails had “sailed the seven seas.” He also noted, “A set of my sails has just completed a trip around the world.” The clients for whom Curtis created sails included luminaries such as James Cagney, Johnny Carson, Walter Cronkite, Errol Flynn, and John F. Kennedy.
Even as automation and computers significantly changed the way in which many sails throughout the world are developed, Curtis earned widespread admiration for maintaining his traditional, time-tested approach to creating the finest possible sails. He continued pursuing this work up until he died at the age of 85.
Photo Credit: Public Domain
For more information on Downes F. Curtis, please check out https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/dc8f7a1ff2734f08aa0ce9ab97dbee94 and https://www.encoresustainablearchitects.com/the-sail-artist-chesapeake-quarterly/
Transportation History 
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