In 1912, the Grinch didn\u2019t ruin Christmas \u2014 a tragic shipwreck did.<\/p>\n
For more than two decades around the turn of the century, a German immigrant named Herman Schuenemann engaged in an unlikely seasonal trade. Every autumn, he\u00a0would sail schooners\u00a0from Chicago north to Michigan\u2019s forested shores, load roughly 5,000 fir trees and return to Chicago to sell them directly from the Clark Street Bridge dock.\u00a0 His prices were low, and he gave away about 10% of his cargo to families who couldn\u2019t afford to buy a tree.<\/p>\n
The Evening Post, the predecessor to today\u2019s New York Post, described him in 1912 as a square-built, cheerful man who inspired trust at first sight.<\/p>\n
The legendary \u201cChristmas Tree Ship\u201d sank in Lake Michigan in 1912 \u2014\u00a0but the trees remained remarkably intact underwater for decades. WHS, Maritime Preservation and Archaeology Program<\/p>\n
In 1910, Schuenemann purchased a share in the Rouse Simmons, a three-masted vessel that would become his final command.<\/p>\n
By 1912, Captain Santa was sailing on borrowed time. The Rouse Simmons was 44 years old at that point, an ancient vessel in an industry already dying. Steam-powered ships had made wooden schooners obsolete and railroads could deliver Christmas trees faster and cheaper than sailing vessels. Many captains had quit the dangerous late-season crossings on Lake Michigan.<\/p>\n
\u201cA ship like the Simmons should not have been out in the lake,\u201d Dr. Theodore Karamanski, a Professor of History at Loyola University in Chicago and author of the upcoming\u00a0\u201cGreat Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan,\u201d told The Post. \u201cShe was too old and had suffered from neglect over the course of the previous several years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Herman Schuenemann, aka \u201cCaptain Santa,\u201d and his crew were all lost with the ship. Wisconsin Historical Society<\/p>\n
Schuenemann kept sailing anyway. \u201cHe had previously filed for bankruptcy and was once again in debt,\u201d Karamanski explained. \u201cDesperation was part of the reason for his risky voyage.\u201d<\/p>\n
On November 22, 1912, the heavily loaded schooner departed Thompson Harbor near Manistique, Michigan, into deteriorating weather. A gale swept down from the northwest, bringing sleet and snow. The wet snow added dangerous weight to the trees piled high on deck.<\/p>\n
The next afternoon, a surfman at the Kewaunee Life-Saving Station spotted the Rouse Simmons about five miles offshore, flying her flag at half-mast \u2014 the universal distress signal.\u00a0Observers believed the ship might run before the wind and make harbor to the south.<\/p>\n
The ship was never seen again.<\/p>\n
The Rouse Simmons was an old boat that should no longer have been sailing. UW Superior Jim Dan Hill Library<\/p>\n
The Evening Post reported the tragedy, noting that another chapter had been added to the long list of Great Lakes disasters.\u00a0All of the crew, estimated to be between a dozen and 16 men, were presumed lost.<\/p>\n
In the days that followed, Christmas trees washed ashore. Wreckage drifted to beaches from Michigan to Wisconsin. Captain Schuenemann\u2019s wallet, preserved in oilskin, was pulled up in a fishing net in 1924. But the Rouse Simmons herself remained lost until 1971, when a diver discovered the wreck in 172 feet of water off Two Rivers, Wisconsin. <\/p>\n
Remarkably, the Christmas trees still filled the hold.<\/p>\n
Chicago felt the loss deeply. On the morning after Schuenemann\u2019s expected arrival, crowds gathered at the Clark Street dock as they had for decades, waiting for that familiar sight: a schooner\u2019s mast with a Christmas tree lashed to the top, appearing over the horizon.<\/p>\n
The Schuenemann daughters (including Elsie, above) stayed in the family trade, selling trees by ship and then by railroad. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Hours passed. The crowd gradually dispersed until only a little girl and her father remained. According to Chicago folklore, when Ruthie Erickson\u2019s father tried to convince her to go home, she replied: \u201cDad, without a Christmas tree, there is no Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Christmas tree ship trade never recovered. The Schuenemann daughters continued selling trees for a time, eventually by railroad rather than schooner. By 1920, the age of Christmas tree ships had ended entirely.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Rouse Simmons was by no means unique as the \u2019Christmas Tree Ship,\u2019 save perhaps that it was due to her sorry end as the last such vessel,\u201d Karamanski said. \u201cBeginning in 1876 with the homely scow schooner with the felicitous name of Reindeer, there were numerous vessels that brought Christmas trees across the lake. Over the years more than eighty vessels were used to bring Christmas trees.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, the US Coast Guard commemorated the Rouse Simmons, delivering trees to needy families. Courtesy of Navy Pier<\/p>\n
The wreck of the Rouse Simmons now lies within the boundaries of the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, listed on the National Register of Historic Places \u2014 a final resting place for Captain Santa and his crew, and an enduring symbol of the risks sailors once took to bring Christmas to Chicago.<\/p>\n
In 2000, the Coast Guard began commemorating the Rouse Simmons annually. Earlier this month, on December 6, the US Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw delivered 1,200 Christmas trees to Chicago\u2019s Navy Pier, continuing a tradition that honors Schuenemann and his crew.<\/p>\n
The Evening Post\u2019s sentiment from more than a century ago still resonates \u2014\u00a0encouraging people lighting their trees to remember the captain who never returned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 1912, the Grinch didn\u2019t ruin Christmas \u2014 a tragic shipwreck did. For more than two decades around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8287,12565,4290,881,9730,9,11,10,23598,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-80778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-great-lakes","11":"tag-history","12":"tag-michigan","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-shipwrecks","17":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}