From the time of his birth, Lane would be exposed to the sea and maritime life—a factor that obviously had a great impact on his later choice of subject matter. Many circumstances of his young life ensured Lane's constant interaction with various aspects of this maritime life, including the fact that Lane's family lived "upon the periphery of Gloucester Harbor's working waterfront," and that his father, Jonathan Dennison Lane, was a sailmaker, and quite possibly owned and ran a sail loft. It is often speculated that Lane would most likely have pursued some seafaring career, or become a sail-maker like his father, instead of an artist, had it not been for a lifelong handicap Lane developed as a child. Although the cause cannot be known with certainty, it is thought that the ingestion of some part of the Peru-Apple—a poisonous weed also known as jimsonweed—by Lane at the age of eighteen months caused the paralysis of the legs from which Lane would never recover. Furthermore, it has been suggested by art historian James A. Craig that because he could not play games as the other children did, he was forced to find some other means of amusement, and that in such a pursuit he discovered and was able to develop his talent for drawing. To go a step further, as a result of his having a busy seaport as immediate surroundings, he was able to develop a special skill in depicting the goings-on inherent in such an environment.