The owners of a historic former Maine windjammer that sank in New York Harbor on July 4 say they plan to refloat the Victory Chimes in hopes of salvaging and restoring her.

The Victory Chimes, a 128-foot schooner featured on a 2003 commemorative Maine state quarter, was previously based out of Rockland. In 2023 it was sold to two brothers who have a history of converting ships into floating restaurants and moved it to New York.

The ship was sold at auction for $75,900 to Miles and Alex Pincus, through the company Crew, which owns multiple floating restaurants in the New York area.

The company released a statement Tuesday saying they’re working with maritime salvage experts to raise both the Victory Chimes and the historic Pilot, another of their vessels that sank recently while berthed in an industrial area of New York Harborthat was anchored next to the Victory Chimes.

Marisa Chiarello, vice president of a public relations firm working for Crew, said the company “called in maritime salvage experts to make a plan to safely raise the vessels, determine the cause of the sinking, and assess any damage to the hulls. We remain hopeful they can be salvaged and restored.”

Paul DeGaeta, a former captain of the boat when it was still part of Maine’s windjammer fleet, co-owned the vessel with Capt. Kip Files from 1990 to 2018. DeGaeta said the Victory Chimes was in rough shape when he went by to view it in New York last year.

“I stopped by last July and was astonished at her condition and how much her midship bilge pump was running,” DeGaeta said. “I predicted she’d sink this summer. She went down under the watch of the Pincus brothers, who were going to make a restaurant out of her.”

Bilge pumps are mechanical devices used to remove accumulated water from the lowest point of a boat’s hull.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard said the cause of the sinking of Victory Chimes is under investigation.

Sydney Phoenix, a Coast Guard public affairs specialist, said the Coast Guard received a report of the Victory Chimes taking on water near Henry Street Basin, near the Red Hook area of Brooklyn, at 5 p.m. on Saturday.

New York City police responded and tried to remove water from the vessel, but it still ultimatley sank.

Chiarello said the morning of July 1, Crew officials discovered that the Pilot had sunk overnight while moored at her storage berth. Then, overnight Friday , during an intense storm that affected New York Harbor and the waterfront, the Victory Chimes began taking on water and ultimately sank alongside the Pilot.

“It’s been a tough few days at Crew,” the company’s statement said. “In incidents last week, two of our out-of-commission vessels sank in their berths. Both were in storage at our maintenance facility in Red Hook as they awaited restoration. We are grateful that there were no injuries in either incident.”

Brad Vogel, a writer in New York who previously worked on a schooner and writes about activities in New York Harbor, had observed the deteriorating Pilot and Victory Chimes. He said when the Victory Chimes first arrived in 2023, it looked in reasonably good shape. By this spring, however, he said it appeared she had degraded and “was really looking rough” and not being adequately cared for.

He, too, saw a bilge pump pushing water out of the vessel in May, but in June he did not recall seeing a bilge pump operating on the watercraft.

Vogel said he was surprised, after the Pilot sank, that more care wasn’t taken to ensure the Victory Chimes was safe from also going down. He said that should raise concerns about how such fleets are being maintained.

Vogel hopes the vessels could be refloated and restored, noting other vessels have successfully gone through that process.

“I’m hopeful they can be refloated because of the cultural value they represent,” he said. “We’re not going to get more of those constructed anytime soon. My overall concern is, if they were left in the condition that allowed these two sinkings to happen, is there the financial wherewithall to raise them, restore them, and get them back into ship shape? I hope so.”

A large fleet of tall ships was in New York for the weekend as part of July 4 celebrations on America’s 250th birthday, but the Victory Chimes was not part of those festivities.

DeGaeta noted the irony of Victory Chimes sinking the same weekend in New York as the parade of more than 40 tall ships from around the world was taking place. He said Victory Chimes participated in the 1976 Operation Sail, in celebration of America’s Bicentennial, also in New York and featuring prominent tall ships.

Built in 1900, Victory Chimes operated as a windjammer starting in 1954, giving tours of the Maine coast, accommodating up to 43 passengers.