By: Cris Kohl
A ship and its captain, the crew, the trees, the tradition — all combined in a 1912 Yuletime tragedy to make a Great Lakes legend.
As folks in Windsor and Essex County tuck into their Night-Before-Christmas slumbers, many probably will savour their sleep on a Simmons mattress. That famous mattress company was founded in 1870 by a former lumber businessman named Rouse Simmons (1832-1897) in Kenosha, Wis.
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Simmons also helped finance a namesake vessel that became one of the more famous shipwrecks in Great Lakes history — immortalized as “the Christmas Tree Ship.”
No shortage of Christmas trees existed in Ontario at the turn of the last century, but the same could not be said of the southwestern Great Lakes region, with harbour cities like Milwaukee and Chicago perched on the edge of virtually treeless prairies. The influx of European immigrants at that time brought with it the tradition of joyfully decorating an evergreen tree for Christmas.
Nineteenth-century sailing ships on the inland seas competitively hauled cargoes of lumber or grain throughout the shipping season. To guarantee a profit at year’s end, a few captains, sensing a seasonal opportunity, switched to cargoes of Christmas trees for that final run of the year to take to an appreciative market.
The Rouse Simmons, a three-masted schooner launched in 1868 at Kenosha, Wis., carried lumber cargoes each season for 42 years. In 1910, the ship was purchased by Capt. Herman Schuenemann, who continued using the vessel in the lumber trade, but he and his crew cut and packed evergreen trees from the north woods into the ship’s holds and onto her deck for that last trip of the year to take advantage of the growing Christmas tree market.
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Chicago families eagerly awaited the arrival of the popular Captain Santa and his festively decorated schooner.
On Nov. 23, 1912, the overloaded Rouse Simmons, carrying 5,000 Christmas trees, foundered in a fierce blizzard off Kewaunee, Wis.
All 16 people on board perished. This is an estimated number because several lumberjacks unexpectedly asked to be taken aboard for the trip down to Chicago.
Many Christmas trees washed ashore, but no bodies were ever found. Twelve years later, a startled commercial fisherman brought up Capt. Schuenemann’s oilskin-covered wallet in his nets.
The captain’s brave widow and their three determined daughters kept up the Christmas tree tradition for 20 more years by cutting northwood evergreens, transporting them to Chicago, and selling them from the deck of an old sailing vessel. The captain’s body was never found, but when his widow died in 1933, the daughters placed both parents’ names on the headstone, along with the outline of an evergreen tree carved in the centre between their names.
The Christmas Tree Ship story went dormant until after World War Two, when historians researched, artists painted, and newspapers annually reminded their readers of the loss of the Rouse Simmons.
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When the wreck of the Rouse Simmons was located in deep water by diver Kent Bellrichard in 1971, 59 years after the ship sank, skeletal evergreen trees, having shed all their needles over the years, were found still stacked below deck.
The Christmas Tree Ship story expanded its fame by being told in dramatizations, concerts, and stage musicals. But it experienced a very visible reawakening in the year 2000 when the tradition of a ship conveying evergreen trees to Chicago was revived by the Coast Guard, which continues, to this day, to bring 1,000 Christmas trees to needy families in that city.
The story of the Rouse Simmons is a unique Great Lakes entry in the catalogue of all things Christmas. People in Windsor and Essex County, snug on their Simmons mattresses, will welcome visions of sugar plums — and perhaps the memorable Christmas Tree Ship story — dancing in their heads.
Cris Kohl is a shipwreck diver and author of numerous books about Great Lakes shipwrecks. His Christmas Tree Ship book is available by texting 1-519-257-9023 or emailing [email protected].
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