| Each November, the captains Schuenemann loaded the schooner the Rouse Simmons with evergreens in Michigan, than sailed for Chicago where the pair moored their vessel to a downtown pier, hoisted a decorated tree up the mast and strung electric lights throughout the rigging, turning the ship into a large Christmas ornament. Despite the dangers of sailing in November, the captain set out as every year before in 1912 on what would be the ships last voyage. Last seen by the Kewaunee Life-Saving Station, the Rouse Simmons was flying a distress flag five miles offshore while being driven southward by a northwest gale. With no chance of catching the fleeing vessel, the Kewaunee station’s captain telephoned the Two Rivers’ Life-Saving Station, 25 miles to the south. The station immediately launched a lifeboat to intercept the distressed vessel and bring her crew to safety. When the lifeboat motored onto the lake, however, the Rouse Simmons had vanished, taking its cargo, captain and estimated sixteen crew and passengers with it. The location of the Rouse Simmons wreck remained a mystery for 59 years. Christmas trees washed up along the coastline for years to follow; and, in 1923, Captain Schuenemann’s wallet came up in a fisherman’s net near Two Rivers, Wis. The site of the wreck was not discovered until 1971, twelve miles northeast of Two Rivers in 165 feet of water. By examining the historical and archaeological record, divers from the Wisconsin Historical Society (WHS) pieced together a more complete story of that fateful day in 1912. Despite the popular stories that materialized around the Simmons’ loss, the vessel was lost under clear conditions, not, as legend has it, last seen by the life-saving crew encrusted with ice, through a fleeting window in a vicious snowstorm. By recreating the search pattern of the Two Rivers lifeboat and comparing it with the Rouse Simmons' location today, the WHS deduced that the Two Rivers lifeboat completely encircled the Rouse Simmons and was never more than a few miles from where she is laying. With a reported six miles of visibility that day, if the ship were still afloat as the lifeboat rounded Two Rivers Point at 4:20 p.m., the life-saving crew would have seen her. Additionally, the snowstorm that many lake captains reported as “the worst they had ever seen,” may well have been terrible, but it began around 5 p.m., well after the Rouse Simmons would have been on the bottom. Furthermore, the ship faces towards the northwest, not the south as reported. Likely before the Two Rivers lifeboat rounded Two Rivers Point, something had gone seriously wrong aboard the vessel, and her crew had deployed the port anchor to hold the Rouse Simmons into the wind. Soon after making this decision, however, large waves sent the Rouse Simmons and her crew to the bottom of Lake Michigan. Many mysteries and legends remain about the old schooner, often affectionately referred to as the Christmas Tree Ship. Forty-four years old when it was lost, the Rouse Simmons stood as a relic of a bygone era when sailing ships dotted the Great Lakes. By 1912, new steam technology had made the sailing vessel obsolete for any purpose other than the lumber trade, as lumber, particularly Christmas trees, would not be damaged by water from leaky, old ships. The mysteries of its loss, the nostalgia for the old sailing ships, and its cargo of Christmas trees all contributed to the sentimentality and myths that surround the Rouse Simmons to this day. To learn more visit the Wisconsin Shipwrecks website. |
