Carol Crane - The Christmas Tree Ship

The CHRISTMAS TREE SHIP

With the scrumptious smell of Grandmas ginger cookies surrounding them, the cousins would gather around Grandpa as he sat close to the crackling fire in his remembering rocker. Grandpa Axels story of Captain Herman Schuenemann, known to many as Captain Santa, was our favorite.

In November of 1912 the Great Lakes schooner Rouse Simmons set off from a small town on Michigans Upper Peninsula with its traditional load of trees, bound for Chicago. The ship had been affectionately nicknamed the Christmas Tree Ship. These trees would be sold, as many had been throughout the years, at the docks in Chicago.

Author Carol Crane recalls her grandfather telling of the storm that took the shipmens lives, their festive cargo, and the schooner down to its final watery resting place. True to the newspaper accounts of the day, Carol eloquently includes in her story how Captain Schuenemanns wife, ever dedicated to her husbands memory, carried on his tradition of delivering Christmas trees.

Using oils and acrylics, Chris Ellison captures the humanity and emotion of this timeless tale.

Carol Crane * Illustrated by Chris Ellison

For all readers who believe in true hearts, honor, and promises to keep.
CAROL

In memory of my grandparents: Irma Mae Bueto Austin, Mary Virginia Ellison, and Jewel Collins Ellison.
CHRIS

When Tim and I were boys, we lived with Grandpa Axel and Grandma Hannah in a lighthouse on Lake Michigan. We both loved to help Grandpa Axel with his job as a lighthouse keeper. I would carry Grandpas toolbox so he could check the light and test the foghorn. Many times a ship passing by would toot its horn and the crew would wave to us. I especially loved it when the sailors saluted us.

Grandpa taught us all about the water. He told us that Lake Michigan is like a child with many moods.

Sometimes the mood is very, very good, and sometimes its very, very bad. Grandpa could tell if a storm was brewing just by feeling the wind. Wait long enough, hed tell us, and the weather will change with the wind.

One day, just before Christmas, I could tell a storm was on its way. The crisp air had turned damp. The water near shore had become a dark, greenish-colored froth. Black clouds quickly began to roll in. Tim and I figured that the lake sure was in a bad mood!

Grandpa hurried us inside the warm kitchen before we got soaked. Grandma Hannah was baking a batch of her sweet-smelling ginger cookies, and my cousins were setting out glasses for milk.

Grandpa Axel then sat down in his story rocker. It was a hand-carved chair, one he had brought with him from Sweden. My cousins, Tim, and I gathered close to the chair.

We each had our favorite story, but mine was the story of the Christmas Tree Ship. It must have been one of Grandpas favorites, too, because he looked toward me, then smiled and winked as he picked up his carving and began speaking slowly, weaving again the tale I so loved.

Every year Captain Santa would load up his little schooner Rouse Simmons with thousands of beautiful Christmas trees from our northern Michigan forests. Now, you children know the lake, and you know how stormy it is in November. But every year Captain Santa braved the weather to bring those trees to the children of Chicago.

This year he had told his wife Barbara that this was the final trip. He was growing old, and the Rouse Simmons was growing old, and as much as he loved selling, and sometimes giving away, those Christmas trees, this year was going to be his last.

He and his crew set off across the lake with five thousand trees, all bundled tightly in the hold and lashed to the deck. The captain had sailed the lake all his life, and he knew when a storm was coming. He felt the wind change, he felt the dampness in the air, and he had all the sails hoisted to race that storm across the lake. But the wind blew harder and harder, and the sleet, ice, and snow covered that little schooner and her trees and eventually pulled her under the water.

Then the sner slowly slipped beneath the churning lake.

Lost were the captain and his crew, this Christmas Ship heartbreak.

Grandpa got up and walked over to the window.

If you could see straight across the lake, he told us, youd see the shores of Wisconsin. A little to the south would be Two Rivers, Wisconsin, very near where the ship went down. After that storm, the winds from the southwest washed driftwood and treasures from the Rouse Simmons clear across the lake and onto our Michigan shores. I have something to show you, said Grandpa. The waves buried it in the sand for quite a few years, but the wind uncovered it.

Grandpa pulled something out of his pocket. It was a corroded tag that said: Chicago Market, 1912.

These copper straps were used to bundle Christmas trees together, he told us. Grandpa said that after the Rouse Simmons went down, some of the trees were found, still in their bundles. We pulled the trees out of the lake. In honor of the captain, everyone helped put a tree up on the lighthouse for all to see.