Nathaniel Livermore Stebbins (January 9, 1847 – July 10, 1922) was an American marine photographer, whose surviving photographs document an important era in the development of American maritime activities, as sweeping technological and social changed revolutionized activity on the water, in military, commercial and leisure spheres.
Of these, about 60% were of marine subjects (the majority of those being of leisure activities, but many are of military and commercial scenes, a valuable record for historians).
He was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania on January 9, 1847, the son of a well-known Unitarian clergyman, Ruphus Phineas Stebbins, and his wife Eliza Clark Livermore.
This early photographic record may be the first publication to systematically employ photography to illustrate landmarks in a book of sailing directions, a type of navigational aid used by mariners for more than one thousand years.
A few plates found their way to the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and another small group eventually wound up at the Mariners' Museum, but the bulk of the remaining collection (about 5,000 images total, of which a little over 2,500 are the original glass negatives) were rescued for Historic New England by William Appleton, the founder of the Society.