The ship known as the Christmas Tree Ship, the Rouse Simmons, sank in November of 1912 between Kewaunee and Two Rivers, Wisconsin, during a winter storm on Lake Michigan. The ship left Thompson Pier, Michigan, reportedly needing repair, and overloaded with Christmas trees for its annual journey to the expanding Christmas market in Chicago. The story surrounding the mystery of the sinking and the legend that followed cannot be told without first sharing the story of the schooners and their masters in the late 19th century.
As the United States of America moved westward in the 1800s, the population of Michigan and Wisconsin grew exponentially. Emigrants were looking for cheap land and opportunities and established small communities on the shorelines of both states. The inland sea was an opportunity in itself. The best way to move commodities to market was by boat. Railroads were not yet a reality there, and highways were rare. Schooners were prevalent, and a ship called a scow-schooner was the choice of shippers on the lakes who needed to access shallow ports. Local artisans built many of these boats, not recognized shipbuilders. There was a necessity to move goods to market, and people naturally stepped up to fill the need. Carpenters or others who knew how to build things were the shipbuilders, and it follows that men became sailors and even captains of vessels with little or no experience due to the need to move merchandise and earn money.
The Schuenemann family moved west for some land they could farm. They settled on land a short distance from Ahnapee, Wisconsin. Then the patriarch, Frederick Schuenemann, was called up to fight in the Civil War. During the war, he contracted a disease called erysipelas, which caused facial eruptions, vomiting, and severe headaches. As if that wasn’t enough, the burning spread to his eyes, making it painful for him to open them in bright light. There was no cure available. He could not perform the hard manual labor required on his farm after he returned from the front. His sons, August, age 12, and Herman, age 1, could not do it either. They sold their farm and moved to town. After much grief and poverty, Frederick received a small veteran pension. Their life in town positioned them near the Ahnapee River, where it emptied into Lake Michigan. The sons of Frederick Schuenemann grew up in poverty, doing what they could to help put food on the table and listening to stories of the local sailors and their adventures. As they reached adulthood, they took jobs along the waterfront or on the water.
August Schuenemann went to work as a short-haul sailor and then purchased a share of an old ship, the William H Hinsdale. He seized opportunities wherever he could find them. As possibilities for work became fewer in Ahnapee, the Schuenemanns moved to Chicago. August and Hermann spoke German and English. They fit in very well in a German neighborhood and easily made connections as entrepreneurs there. They tried many different kinds of business; they opened a grocery store and tried their hand at operating a saloon, but always lived one step away from losing everything and crashing back into poverty.
Christmas festivities provided an expanding opportunity for earnings at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. From his days as a short-haul sailor, August knew ports in northern Michigan and Wisconsin where he could purchase Christmas trees. He made a business by buying trees in the north, loading them on a ship, and selling them from the ship docked in downtown Chicago. It was dangerous sailing on Lake Michigan in November and December, but the profit was enticing. August arrived in Sturgeon Bay in the fall of 1898 to buy trees, but he had no boat to load them on. He purchased a flat-bottomed schooner, a scow schooner, called the Thal, for $200.00. He had to borrow $100.00 to have enough money for both the trees and the schooner. Near Glance, Illinois, the Thal was observed too close to the beach and battered by waves. The next morning, it was gone, and three lives were lost. The family was devastated by the loss of August, but Herman did not hesitate to continue with the Christmas Tree business. He even took it to the next level.
Many were waking up to the opportunity Christmas presented in an economy. Newspapers started a countdown of how many days to Christmas right after Thanksgiving. Newspapers ran Christmas ads, and department stores decorated inside and out to keep shoppers in a holiday mood. The stores ordered huge trees and decorated them with electric lights and glass balls.
Herman developed ties to the tree industry near Manistique, Michigan, and with a bigger ship, the Mary Collins, he bought more trees, garlands, and wreaths made there. He brought the product home and set up his store on the deck of his ship in the Chicago River near the Clark Street Bridge. With the opening of commercial facilities at the mouth of the Calumet River, people didn’t often see schooners in the Chicago River. The days of short-haul shipping on the Great Lakes were waning. Railroads were more prevalent, and highways were increasing. Therefore, customers who had not seen a schooner in some time weren’t just buying a Christmas tree; they were having an experience. The setting was unique, and the location was perfect.
Herman Schuenemann had a personality people liked. He “suggested Santa simply by the nature of who he was. Herman was jovial, personable, and outgoing. He enjoyed what he was doing and the people he was dealing with. Although he didn’t physically look like Santa and didn’t dress up like Santa or grow a big white beard, people started calling him Captain Santa. Herman loved the image itself even more than the monetary advantage it gave him in the Christmas tree market. Newspapers love a good human interest story, and every year there was a new story about Captain Santa. When pictures of Herman appeared in the papers, Captain Santa’s image got another boost. Even the way he brought the trees to market seemed almost like Santa magic. This beautiful big schooner came swooping in almost like a sleigh but with trees on it for the children.
Herman was forced to get a different boat when his schooner, the Mary Collins, went aground. He used several other ships but sailed with the George Wrenn for the most prolonged time – until, like the Mary Collins, it lost its usefulness. The Rouse Simmons was the next ship, but it wasn’t much better than the Wrenn in terms of utility. The second year he used the Simmons, they had to pull it out of the water on their way north to re-caulk the bottom. Bringing trees to market via a schooner in Lake Michigan was a romantic but dangerous idea. It would have been easier and safer to ship them by rail and then transport them to a ship at the dock for sale, but Herman could not give up his image as Captain Santa, which in the end cost him his life.
It was November 1912, and loaded with trees, the Rouse Simmons waited for sails to be hoisted and be on its way. Captain Schuenemann was anxious to reach Chicago during Thanksgiving weekend. A northwest wind started to rise on November 22nd, and the captain decided to take advantage of the wind to give him a push toward Chicago. The last time anyone saw the Rouse Simmons was as she passed Kewaunee, Wisconsin, with her distress flag flying. The Kewaunee life-saving station knew that the ship was moving at a rate they could not catch up to, so they called the Two Rivers station to tell them there was a ship headed in their direction with a distress flag flying. Two Rivers launched a boat to intercept the Rouse Simmons, but they never found her.
By Thanksgiving Day, there were urgent questions about what had happened to the Rouse Simmons. There wasn’t any wreckage, no cargo or bodies washed ashore; there were no witnesses to a sinking – maybe the Rouse Simmons was just delayed somewhere. When the newspapers got involved, so did the number of stories. There were stories of fact, rumor, and outright lies. There were untrue stories about sighted wreckage and beaches covered in Christmas trees. Then came the report that, allegedly, someone found a bottle containing a farewell note from Herman Schuenemann. The description was of a black bottle sealed with a whittled stopper – a pine whittled stopper. The message was “Friday – Everybody good-by. I guess we are all through. Sea washed off our deck load on Thursday. During the night the small boat was washed off. Leaking badly. Engwald and Steve fell overboard Thursday. God help us. HERMAN SCHUENEMANN.” One of the problems with the note was that the days in the message contradicted everything witnesses had testified to. The Simmons didn’t depart Thompson Pier until Friday, so how did this happen before they ever set sail? The relatives and loved ones of the captain and crew must have wondered what to believe.
The people of Chicago loved the Christmas ship, and sentiments toward the ship, her crew, and her captain were evident. They waited anxiously for word of the ship and its crew. Eventually, the public acknowledged that the Rouse Simmons had sunk. Captain Schuenemann, his friend Captain Nelson, and between ten and fifteen seamen were lost in Lake Michigan. They took sail in a possibly unseaworthy vessel, reportedly overloaded, manned by a “pickup crew,” and commanded by a captain more focused on the lure of the gamble than the crew’s safety, but no one was ultimately held accountable for the loss of the Rouse Simmons and her crew. There was not a demand for answers or an investigation. People were more accepting of death and misery than they are today. Accidental deaths were considered everyday events. Many died in factory events and fires; people were killed at railroad crossings. Things that seemed unavoidable happened, and trying to assign blame was pointless.
The ship was eventually found in 2006 by a research team from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Divers found the wreck in 170 feet of water with its bow pointing northwest, about 180 degrees off the course it was on when last sighted. The schooner could still steer up to its final moments and had probably come about in an attempt to ride out the storm with its bow into the wind. The Rouse Simmons “lay there with its masts still in place, laden with Christmas trees.” The mystery remains – no one knows what sunk the Christmas Tree Ship.
The Schuenemanns were an American success story. After the loss of the Rouse Simmons, the business continued under Herman’s wife’s and his daughter’s direction. However, they did not sail north and bring back trees; they shipped them by rail and sold them from various schooners docked in the river. Eventually, the docked schooners had to be given up, and the business moved to a storefront. Barbara Schuenemann and her daughters sold trees and made wreaths and garlands. Immediately after losing her father, Elsie Schuenemann became the voice of the business. She was consumed with the thought that the show must go on and the need to protect her mother.
And the legend continues. Since the year 2000, the United States Coast Guard has revived the memory of the Christmas Ship and Captain Santa by bringing Christmas trees from northern Michigan in November to Chicago for distribution to needy families.
Show Notes:
- Neuschel, Fred. Lives and Legends of the Christmas Tree Ships. The University of Michigan Press. 2007
- Christmas Tree Ship, the Rouse Simmons, sank on Lake Michigan 109 years ago. Wisconsin Maritime Museum will honor its legacy Saturday. https://www.htrnews.com/story/entertainment/2021/12/01/lake-michigan-christmas-tree-ship-rouse-simmons-sank-1912/8778837002/
- A ship carrying thousands of Christmas trees sank in Lake Michigan 107 years ago. https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/history/christmas-tree-ship-sinking/69-06a7fa47-2e80-4ab0-b592-6b62bcc8e078
