The state’s top historian decried the recent sinking of a legendary Maine schooner, expressing hopes its owner can raise it from New York harbor.
The loss of the ship is “heartbreaking for Maine and the nation’s maritime heritage” because it’s the last schooner of its type, Steve Bromage, executive director of the Maine Historical Society, told The Associated Press.
“While salvaging her requires tremendous effort and expense, it would be very unfortunate to lose such an important part of history,” Bromage said.
The owner of the schooner, which is the last surviving Chesapeake ram, a kind of flat-bottomed schooner designed to navigate narrow and shallow waterways, is under growing pressure to raise and restore it.
The schooner, which spent years as a charter off the coast of Rockland, Maine, sank during a squall earlier this year in Brooklyn Harbor.
The 128-foot Victory Chimes dates to 1900 and is the ship that graces the 2003 Maine quarter.
The company that owns it planned to restore it as a floating restaurant.
Many in the maritime community are calling on the company to do what it can to save the ship and to account for why it sank.
Brad Vogel, a member of a canoe club called the Gowanus Dredgers, whose members paddle near the site, called the potential loss of the ship “a shame” and “in some ways unforgivable.”
“People in Maine, people in New York City, do want answers, and want to know what’s going on,” he told AP. “And it’s not at all certain that there is a commitment to raising” the vessel.
