The Victory Chimes, an historic schooner built in 1900 with a deep history of chartering in Maine, has sunk in Brooklyn during Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s America 250th maritime celebration.
The vessel, which was to be converted into a floating restaurant, sank over the July 4th holiday in the Henry Street Basin during a squall, according to Midcoast Villager.
Brad Vogel, who covers maritime happenings in Brooklyn, was quoted as saying the boat had been in disrepair, showing signs of rot.
The boat was towed out of Rockland Harbor three years ago with the plan being to convert it into a restaurant.
The vessel had first been docked on the west side of Manhattan and over the winter was docked in Brooklyn.
The National Historic Landmark, the last surviving Chesapeake Ram schooner, is the vessel featured on the 2003 Maine state quarter.
Victory Chimes was built at Bethel, Delaware in 1900 by George K. Phillips Co., first named Edwin and Maud after the children of its first Captain, Robert E. Riggen.
The vessel, which served in the cargo trade until 1945 carrying sawn lumber, grain, soft coal and fertilizer, was converted to carry passengers in 1946.
The boat was renamed Victory Chimes after purchase by a syndicate in 1954 for charter off Maine’s midcoast.
Later purchased by a Minnesota banker who brought it to Minnesota for educational cruises for high school students, Thomas Monaghan, owner of Domino’s Pizza, then bought it.
Monaghan, who renamed it Domino Effect, used the vessel for employee-incentive cruises, restoring the vessel at Sample’s Shipyard in Boothbay Harbor.
The ship returned to Maine in 1989, when Kip Files and Paul DeGaeta changed its name back to Victory Chimes for passenger charters.
Miles and Alex Pincus, who own a number of floating restaurants in the New York City area, bought it in 2023.
The Victory Chimes website still shows a Rockland, Maine post office box so clearly its heart is still in midcoast Maine…
I sailed on the Victory chimes several times, in/around Penobscot Bay…a wonderful experience. Capt. Kip Files and crew worked hard to keep her in good condition. It is very sad to see this happen to her. She cannot be replaced.
Couldn’t they just as easily have put it in a parking lot to be used as a restaurant ?
What a sad end for such a beautiful ship .
A 126-year-old schooner, reportedly in disrepair, owned by New Yorkers, docked in a New York harbor, sank during a storm… and somehow the headline is “on Bowdoin College alum Zohran Mamdani’s watch.”
This is exactly what’s wrong with journalism today.