A pair of historic ships owned by local hospitality company Crew sank within a few days of each other while moored in Red Hook.
The Pilot, a century-old schooner-turned-floating-bar, suddenly slipped below the waves in the Henry Street Basin last week. The vessel, along with the 126-year-old Victory Chimes, had been floating at Crew’s maintenance facility in the basin for several months.
Only the Pilot’s masts were visible above the water, and barstools and other detritus from its deck drifted nearby. On July 2, Crew co-owner Alex Pincus told Brooklyn Paper it wasn’t clear what had doomed the vessel.
At left, barstools and detritus from the Pilot float in the water in the Henry Street Basin. Left, the ship’s masts remained visible beside the Victory Chimes on July 2, before the second ship sank. Photos courtesy of Brad Vogel
“Our immediate focus is working with the appropriate professionals and authorities to understand what happened and determine the safest path to raise Pilot,” he said. “We are devastated but remain hopeful that she can be salvaged.”
The same day, a Crew representative said the Victory Chimes, a 126-year-old National Historic Landmark, was “fine.” But on July 5, locals saw that the Victory Chimes had joined the Pilot underwater.
Crew did not immediately return a request for comment on the status of the Victory Chimes.
Pincus and his brother Miles bought the Pilot in 2015. In 2017, the renovated ship made its debut as a seasonal floating bar at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Last fall, the boat was hauled off for “major restoration work,” Crew said in a social media post at the time. In the same post, the company said Victory Chimes — which it purchased in 2023 — was “commencing a major refit for something new and exciting.”
The Pilot served as a floating seasonal bar from 2017-2025.Photo courtesy of Crew
Local Brad Vogel said both schooners appeared in Red Hook a few months later.
During regular canoe trips with the Gowanus Dredgers, Vogel saw that Pilot and Victory Chimes both looked “pretty rough,” though Pilot seemed in worse shape.
“Definitely there were patches of the hull where the wood really seemed ragged and deteriorated, and it really just looked in rough condition,” he said. “The Crew company has certainly restored quite a number of vessels over the years, and has acquired a number of them, so this is not a foreign thing for them, to have vessels that need work.”
The company owns several other floating eateries, including the Fireboat, a former FDNY vessel that now floats in the Pilot’s old spot in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
Vogel said the Pilot looked worn and “in rough shape.” Photo courtesy of Brad Vogel/Crew
Vogel and the other boaters sometimes saw a bilge pump moving water out of Victory Chimes. That’s not unusual, he said. Old wooden boats are bound to take on water, which needs to be pumped out regularly so they can stay afloat.
Though he did not have details of the ships’ conditions, Vogel noted that the Pilot sank in the midst of an extraordinary heat wave, and speculated those pumps may have failed. In that case, the vessel would have taken on more and more water until it couldn’t stay afloat anymore, he said. A piece of the ship’s hull may also have given way, he said.
Thunderstorms moved through the city on July 3 — around the time the Victory Chimes sank — battering many of the historic ships docked in the city for Sail4th 250.
Originally built as a racing vessel, the Pilot instead spent decades as a pilot ship in Massachusetts. The 121-foot schooner was commandeered by the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II, served as a research boat in the 1970s (when Jacques Cousteau was reportedly among its passengers,) and later returned to its original purpose, racing.
The Pilot, shortly after it was built in 1924. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/The Boston Globe, 1924
In a July 2 Instagram post, Pincus — who has since made his profile private — said the Pilot’s sinking was a “nightmare.”
“For the last ten years, our team, alongside so many friends and family, has poured endless work, sweat, care, and love into making Pilot something incredible,” Pincus wrote. “When we found her in 2015, she was languishing in a shipyard. We brought her back from the edge and gave her a new life.”
The three-masted Victory Chimes is two decades older, built in 1900 as a cargo hauler originally named Edwin & Maude. Over the decades, it served as an educational and recreational ship — the boat was briefly named “Domino Effect” when owned by Domino’s Pizza owner Thomas Monaghan — but was most famous as a passenger windjammer in Maine.
The Victory Chimes on July 3, beside the sunken Pilot (on left.) Photo courtesy of Brad Vogel
Victory Chimes was added to the National Historic Register and named a National Historic Landmark in the late 1990s, and the ship on the Maine state quarter was designed to resemble the vessel. It’s believed to be one of only two surviving three-masted Schooners in the U.S.
“She owes her survival to hardworking owners and crews over her ninety-six year career as a working vessel,” the National Parks Service wrote about the ship in 1996. “They have kept the schooner alive by keeping her in working condition; replacement in kind has been practiced as a matter of course throughout her working life. For the last fifty years history-minded passengers have also shared the experience of sailing on board one of the last great American windjammers.”
The ship’s sailing career ended in 2022, according to the Bangor Daily News, in part due to “cost and availability of materials for upcoming maintenance.”
The Victory Chimes in 1930. Photo courtesy of National Parks Service
The Pincus brothers bought the ship at auction for $75,900 in 2023.
Speaking to Brooklyn Paper before Victory Chimes sank, Vogel said he hoped the Pilot could be saved, especially because it was eligible for the National Register of Historic Places.
“My hope would be that it’s salvageable, it can be re-floated, and the owners release a plan to the public for how they’re going to care for this National Register-eligible historic vessel,” he said. “Historic resources like this, yes, they’re owned by private parties. But at a certain point they do take on a public quality of being part of our shared heritage. Especially as time goes on, some of these historic wooden vessels become increasingly rare. To lose one permanently is sort of a loss to our national cultural collection.”