NEWBURYPORT, Mass. - Its Black Dog T-shirts are famous the world over.

Now, its 90-foot tall ship with the unlikely name of "Alabama" is gaining fame by sailing to ports with shops that sell the Black Dog brand.

The newest store opened earlier this year in this northeast Massachusetts coastal city, and the gaff-rigged schooner will show up for dockside tours in early September.

While the link between an apparel shop and talls ships may not be apparent, Morgan Douglas, captain of the ship, calls it the "simplest of time lines."

He noted the Black Dog brand was started by his father, Robert Douglas, in the early 1970s when he bought an old inn and opened a restaurant with the name in Vineyard Haven Harbor on Martha's Vineyard off the south coast of Massachusetts.

At the same time, Douglas said, his father built the 150-foot schooner Shenandoah, modeled after an 1850 vessel. He also bought and rebuilt the Alabama, a Gloucester-style fishing schooner that served as the pilot boat for Mobile, Ala., for decades.

Black Dog T-shirts are famously sold from a store adjacent to the family's restaurant in Vineyard Haven Harbor, and both the Shenandoah and the Alabama home port there.

As for the Black Dog, well, he's a mix of black Labrador and Boxer. His image adorns not only T-shirts but handbags, caps, sweatshirts, shorts, assorted other apparel -- and a mariner's flag that flies from the masts of the family ships.