The former grand old lady of Maine’s coastal windjammer fleet has suffered yet another indignity, perhaps a fatal one. VICTORY CHIMES, shown above in her glory in Great Cove, sank in New York City during a squall over the July 4 weekend.
The schooner’s current owners, who have been less than credible in prior statements about this historic vessel, reportedly are saying that they hope to salvage and restore her as a restaurant. That means, at best, she’ll never sail again.
Yet, the CHIMES had a varied and memorable sailing life for well more than a century. She was a frequent visitor to Great Cove during fleet sail-ins and on individualized cruises when her passengers toured the renowned WoodenBoat campus. I last photographed her in the Cove in 2022. I’ll try to memorialize her long life’s highlights from published sources.
The CHIMES is the gaff-rigged, three-masted schooner featured on the 2003 commemorative “Maine quarter” (25-cent piece). She was the last surviving Chesapeake Ram schooner and was a registered National Historic Landmark. She was a “sails-only” vessel: She never had an internal engine; her motorized yawlboat pushed her when there was no wind or when the sails were not raised:
She was built in Bethel, Delaware, in 1900 as a 127.5-foot general cargo carrier. They christened her the EDWIN AND MAUD, the names of the children of her first captain. She hauled such varied goods as lumber, fertilizer and coal in the mid-Atlantic coastal waters until 1945. Then, she was converted and re-launched as a passenger ship in 1946.
She was first christened VICTORY CHIMES in 1954 when she was brought to Maine for coastal cruising charters. Thirty years later, she was purchased by a Minnesota banker, who took her up to his state as a floating classroom for high-schoolers. In 1988, she was bought again and restored by the owner of Domino’s Pizza, Inc.; he re-named her the DOMINO EFFECT and used her for employee incentive cruises and business promotion.
In 1989, the old schooner was bought by two Maine captains, returned to the Pine State and re-christened VICTORY CHIMES. She was homeported in Rockland and became the icon of Maine coastal cruising and the largest ship in the windjammer fleet.
The present owners bought her at auction in 2023 when she was having difficult times. They said that they were going to fit her out as a dockside restaurant in New York City. She was towed north and eventually moored under tarps at a desolate area on the Brooklyn waterfront. The closest she ever came to being a restaurant was when she was misused to promote a pizza chain.
I bet many here on the Maine coast have trouble envisioning the VICTORY CHIMES as anything less than a long, three-masted beauty flying under full press of sail through our beautiful waters. (Images from the Leighton Archives taken in Brooklin, Maine.) See also the image in the Comment space.