Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from houtworks
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and I'm Holly fry Say. We have a Christmas episode,
Speaker 1: a shipwreck episode, and a ghost story all rold into
Speaker 1: one thing, and that is the story of the Christmas
Speaker 1: Tree Ship at the Rouse Simmons which thank in Lake
Speaker 1: Michigan while hauling a load of Christmas trees to Chicago.
Speaker 1: That's a really popular story in the Great Lakes region.
Speaker 1: It's popular among Coastguard personnel because the Coastguard is carrying
Speaker 1: on this tradition today. Um, It's been the subject of
Speaker 1: documentaries and histories and folk tales and story books, and
Speaker 1: yet I had never heard of it until listener Alfred,
Speaker 1: and then many other people requested it. I'm not exaggerating
Speaker 1: when I say many many other people. We've gotten literally
Speaker 1: to request for this in the last twenty four hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we and we've gotten several like throughout the year. It's
Speaker 1: not always when Christmas is is imminent, but as we
Speaker 1: approached the holidays, it definitely ratchets up in in uh
Speaker 1: frequency of request. Yes, So we're gonna start with a
Speaker 1: little background on three things. The first is the captain
Speaker 1: of the Rous Simmons, the next is the Christmas Trees themselves,
Speaker 1: and then the third is the ship that they were
Speaker 1: sailing on. And we're going to kind of talk about
Speaker 1: those three things before we talk about the actual event.
Speaker 1: So Captain Hermann E. Schoeman was originally from Wisconsin. He
Speaker 1: was one of six children, and he was born around
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty five. This was right at the peak of
Speaker 1: sail powered shipping in the Great Lakes. He was growing
Speaker 1: up as sail powered ships were being supplanted by steam
Speaker 1: powered vessels, and most of the sailing ships that stayed
Speaker 1: on the water as steam took overhauled lumber. Herman and
Speaker 1: his brother August moved to Chicago when Herman was about
Speaker 1: twenty years old. Chicago was home to an extremely busy
Speaker 1: harbor where they could try their hands at both sailing
Speaker 1: and at other business ventures. On April nine, Herman married
Speaker 1: Barbara Schindel. They had three daughters named Elsie, Hazel, and Pearl,
Speaker 1: and those last two were twins. Herman in August did
Speaker 1: pretty well for themselves, but by far their most money
Speaker 1: making time of the year was in November and December
Speaker 1: when they sold Christmas trees. So the use of evergreen
Speaker 1: bows to decorate homes around the winter solstice is a
Speaker 1: European tradition that goes back centuries. Uh Then, in Germany,
Speaker 1: medieval Christians began decorating evergreen trees with apples to symbolize
Speaker 1: the Garden of Eden, and this eventually morphed into the
Speaker 1: tradition of Christmas trees as we know them now, where
Speaker 1: it stop being apples and many other ornaments took their places,
Speaker 1: and you eventually get what we are used to seeing
Speaker 1: in homes today. Decorating Christmas trees really did not spread
Speaker 1: far beyond its German roots until the eighteen forties when
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria encouraged Prince Albert, who was born in Germany,
Speaker 1: to decorate a tree as he had done when he
Speaker 1: was a child. Once a sketch of the royal family
Speaker 1: next to their tree appeared in the London News, Christmas trees,
Speaker 1: as was unsurprising when Queen Victoria did anything, became extremely fashionable.
Speaker 1: She's quite a trend setter in many regards. We've talked
Speaker 1: about possibly doing an episode on just the things that
Speaker 1: she set in motion in terms of cultural popularity, But
Speaker 1: by the late nineteenth century, decorating trees had become a
Speaker 1: widely popular Christmas activity in the United States, and evergreen
Speaker 1: trees were in high demand leading up to the holiday.
Speaker 1: To in Chicago in particular, schooners laden with Christmas trees
Speaker 1: arrived from Wisconsin and northern Michigan, which were the nearest
Speaker 1: evergreen forests. These shipments came much later in the season
Speaker 1: than your typical lumber run or even your typical other
Speaker 1: shipping across the Great Lakes, because the objective was to
Speaker 1: deliver the trees not too long before Christmas, but before
Speaker 1: the absolute worst winter storms made the Lake two hazardous
Speaker 1: to cross. This meant that Christmas trees were traveling on
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan as much as a month after all of
Speaker 1: the rest of the shipping operations had pretty much shut
Speaker 1: down for the season, and there were not that many
Speaker 1: people willing or able to make this late season trip.
Speaker 1: Estimates put the number it maybe a couple dozen vessels,
Speaker 1: and included among these were ones captained by the Schuneman brothers.
Speaker 1: This is a job that Herman Schuneman seems to have
Speaker 1: really genuinely enjoyed, and he even continued to Hall trees
Speaker 1: after his brother was killed in a shipwreck doing that
Speaker 1: exact thing. August Schuneman was aboard the schooner s Thal
Speaker 1: which broke up in a storm near Glencoe, Illinois in November.
Speaker 1: Of everyone aboard the ship was lost. Most likely the
Speaker 1: only reason that Herman was not on board with his
Speaker 1: brother was because his twin daughters were newborns at that time.
Speaker 1: But after his brother's death, Herman Schunemann kept hauling Christmas
Speaker 1: trees on a number of different schooners. As he expanded
Speaker 1: the Christmas tree business, he kept meeting to go farther
Speaker 1: and farther north to get better trees for less money.
Speaker 1: This was great from a business perspective, it gave him
Speaker 1: a bigger profit margin, but the farther north he went,
Speaker 1: the more likely he was to face really dangerous weather.
Speaker 1: And he also upgraded his vessels, working his way up
Speaker 1: through larger, more stable vessels that could hold more trees,
Speaker 1: and the last of these, which he used for three years,
Speaker 1: was the Rouse Simmons. The Rouse Simmons was a two
Speaker 1: hundred five ton three masted schooner which measured a hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty two feet long and twenty seven feet wide.
Speaker 1: It was licensed and enrolled out of Milwaukee on August
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty eight, and it was named after a prominent
Speaker 1: merchant from Kenosha, Wisconsin, who was one of the primary
Speaker 1: investors in the ship. Like most captains, Schuman couldn't afford
Speaker 1: to just buy a ship of his own, so in
Speaker 1: Captain Schuhman bought a partial share of the Ralph Simmons,
Speaker 1: and that same year he established a new business, the
Speaker 1: North Michigan Evergreen Nursery. It's address was the southwest corner
Speaker 1: of Clark Street Bridge, which let him sell the trees
Speaker 1: directly from the ship, rather than having to offload them
Speaker 1: and then distribute them to grocers and other resellers. He
Speaker 1: wasn't the only person who was doing this. There were
Speaker 1: other Christmas tree sellers who were uh selling directly from
Speaker 1: their ships, and they would generally decorate the ships and
Speaker 1: it would be a big production. And like, getting to
Speaker 1: that part of the story made me kind of wistful
Speaker 1: that I didn't live in Chicago during this time, because
Speaker 1: I think going down to the docks to pick a
Speaker 1: Christmas tree off of a ship would have been really cool.
Speaker 1: I would love to hunt down some pictures of the
Speaker 1: decorated ships if we can. Yeah, I I as of
Speaker 1: as as of when we're sitting here, have not been
Speaker 1: able to find one that we can use. But I'm
Speaker 1: gonna keep looking um So. By nineteen twelve, shoot him
Speaker 1: On and Captain Charles Nelson each owned an eighth of
Speaker 1: the roup. Simmons and a businessman named Man's Jay Bonner
Speaker 1: owned the remaining three quarters of the ship, and by
Speaker 1: that year Sheneman had also purchased two hundred forty acres
Speaker 1: of land in Michigan, who uses his own Christmas tree farm.
Speaker 1: Even by cutting out the middleman and owning his own farm,
Speaker 1: his margins were still basically razor thin. He had to
Speaker 1: transport as many trees as possible to be able to
Speaker 1: pay the salaries of the people who tended and cut
Speaker 1: the trees. He also had to pay the crew and
Speaker 1: everyone else involved in that chain, even though it was
Speaker 1: kind of encapsulated. Even so, he was an extremely generous man,
Speaker 1: and he actually gave a lot of his trees away
Speaker 1: to Chicago's poor, and he became such a beloved figure
Speaker 1: during this Chicago Christmas tree season that people started calling
Speaker 1: him Captain Santa. He seems to have loved this title,
Speaker 1: and he kept Captain Santa newspaper clippings in his wallet,
Speaker 1: which he wrapped an oil skin while he was captaining
Speaker 1: the schooner to keep the contents dry. So we're about
Speaker 1: to get to the more sad part of the story,
Speaker 1: so let's take a brief moment before we do. That.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a smart plan, so to return to the
Speaker 1: last voyage of the rows Simmons and November of nineteen twelve,
Speaker 1: shoot Himan had been doing late season runs to haul
Speaker 1: Christmas trees for almost thirty years, so he was really
Speaker 1: experienced in doing this. The rows Simmons had also been
Speaker 1: on the water for more than forty years, which was
Speaker 1: about twice as long as the typical lifespan of a
Speaker 1: sail powered ship at the time, so as you might
Speaker 1: expect given its age, the ship was not in great
Speaker 1: condition anymore. All of those years of service, especially the
Speaker 1: ones that were spent sailing in stormy other had taken
Speaker 1: its hole on it. The schooner left Thompson, Michigan on
Speaker 1: November twenty two and nineteen twelve with somewhere between three
Speaker 1: thousand and five thousand Christmas trees. This was too many
Speaker 1: to fit in the hold, so many of them were
Speaker 1: arranged on the deck. Some people who saw it leaveport
Speaker 1: described it as looking like a floating forest. The reason
Speaker 1: for being so overloaded was that many of the region's
Speaker 1: Christmas tree farms had been hammered by bad weather that year,
Speaker 1: and trees were in particularly short supply. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff that we don't have really clear details about,
Speaker 1: and one of those is that we don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of concrete information about exactly who was aboard the
Speaker 1: Ralph Simmons for its final voyage. We know Captain Schunemann
Speaker 1: was there, as well as Captain Charles Nelson, each of
Speaker 1: them owning an eighth of the ship. There were also
Speaker 1: probably nine or ten other crew aboard, and there are
Speaker 1: reports that a party of lumberjacks had secured passage to
Speaker 1: Chicago aboard the schooner. None of this is document did
Speaker 1: very well. A huge winter storm hit Lake Michigan while
Speaker 1: the raw Simmons was en route. We don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of information about what happened between the schooner's departure
Speaker 1: on the twenty two and to fifty p m. On
Speaker 1: the following day, when a Surfman, which is uh what
Speaker 1: you would call a member the Life Saving Service, which
Speaker 1: would later become the U. S. Coastguard, told his station keeper,
Speaker 1: Captain Nelson Crate, that he'd spotted a ship heading south
Speaker 1: and flying a distress signal. Captain Crate tried to find
Speaker 1: a tug boat that to go out and help the
Speaker 1: then unknown schooner, but the vessel he was after had
Speaker 1: actually already left a few minutes later, he lost sight
Speaker 1: of the ship, so he called the Two Rivers Life
Speaker 1: Saving Station, which was the next station to the south,
Speaker 1: to raise the alarm. He ordered that they take their
Speaker 1: boat out to try to meet the distressed vessel and
Speaker 1: offer aid, and they did, heading out to the approximate
Speaker 1: position where they should have been able to meet the schooner,
Speaker 1: and at first they had clear weather and good visibility,
Speaker 1: but as it started to get dark the gale blue
Speaker 1: in visibility became extremely poor thanks to missed and heavy snow,
Speaker 1: and the rescue crew couldn't find any sign of the
Speaker 1: reported schooner, and forty ft swells meant that their own
Speaker 1: lives were then at risk. There are tales that are
Speaker 1: break in the storm allowed some of the rescuers to
Speaker 1: catch a glimpse of a ship that looked like it
Speaker 1: was completely encased in ice and riding dangerously low in
Speaker 1: the water. This is probably kind of a romantic embellishment
Speaker 1: from later on. When the Ralph Simmons didn't arrive in
Speaker 1: Chicago has scheduled on the morning of November, Barbara Shuneman
Speaker 1: and her daughters were naturally worried that something had gone wrong,
Speaker 1: but they held out hope that the captain had just
Speaker 1: pulled into a safe harbor to wait out the storm.
Speaker 1: This was something that he was known to do and
Speaker 1: would be uh logical. But sadly the schooner never arrived,
Speaker 1: which made this Christmas season are really somber one. In
Speaker 1: Chicago that year, on December five, the front page of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Tribune read Christmas Ship lost on the Lake
Speaker 1: with seventeen on board, and soon after that Christmas tree
Speaker 1: started washing up on shore near two rivers. The saddest
Speaker 1: part of the story is really the loss of life.
Speaker 1: But that part just broke my heart when I learned it.
Speaker 1: Uh So, we're going to take another brief moment before
Speaker 1: we get back to some discussion about exactly what might
Speaker 1: have happened to the to the ship and to the
Speaker 1: aftermath of this whole wreck. So there are several theories
Speaker 1: about exactly what led to the loss of the Ralph Simmons,
Speaker 1: along with all of its crew and its passengers. One
Speaker 1: theory is that the ship lost its wheel during this storm,
Speaker 1: although the wheel has been brought up by divers. Another
Speaker 1: is that the weight of all those Christmas trees is
Speaker 1: just too much for the aging schooner to endure once
Speaker 1: the storm got really bad, especially considering that in that
Speaker 1: kind of storm, the ship and the trees on the
Speaker 1: deck would have become increasingly covered in heavy ice. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you live anywhere where icy weather is common, you
Speaker 1: know how heavy a giant load of ice can be. Oh. Yes.
Speaker 1: A third theory is that Schuneman's failure to have the
Speaker 1: ship recalked before the nineteen twelve season was ultimately his undoing.
Speaker 1: He'd had the ship recalked the year before, and he
Speaker 1: probably didn't do it in nineteen twelve because he didn't
Speaker 1: have the money in the aftermath of having been sued
Speaker 1: over non payment of a debt. The fourth theory is
Speaker 1: that a huge wave caught the ship's anchor and kind
Speaker 1: of launched it over the bowsprit and that this momentum
Speaker 1: pulled the bow of the ship under the water into
Speaker 1: a dive it just couldn't recover from. Fisherman did find
Speaker 1: a wallet wrapped in oil skin belonging to Captain Schunman
Speaker 1: in their nets in nine four. Its contents were still
Speaker 1: intact and it was returned to his family. A diver
Speaker 1: named Kent Bell Richards found the deck in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one while he was looking for a completely different shipwreck,
Speaker 1: which was the Vernon That was a much larger ship
Speaker 1: that sank during a storm in eighteen eighty seven. This
Speaker 1: is all kind of serendipitous. He found the wreck by
Speaker 1: feeling it after his cobbled together dive like malfunctioned under
Speaker 1: the water. The Ralph Simmons was in a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy two ft of water, about four and a half
Speaker 1: miles from two rivers, and it was still full of
Speaker 1: Christmas trees, Some of the ones below the decks still
Speaker 1: had their needles intact. This was coincidentally not far from
Speaker 1: where the Ralph Simmons nearly met its end in a
Speaker 1: different storm in nineteen o five, when its masks were
Speaker 1: thrown off in a gale. In July and August of
Speaker 1: two thousand six, there was an underwater archaeological survey of
Speaker 1: the ship. It was conducted by the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Speaker 1: They found that the anchor chain and the math we're
Speaker 1: all lying forward of the bow. And so one possible
Speaker 1: explanation for this would be that the bow of the
Speaker 1: ship became too heavy and it took a nose dive.
Speaker 1: And another is that the heavy items like the rigging
Speaker 1: and the chains were all shoved forward as the ship
Speaker 1: was sinking and then actually sank for some other reason.
Speaker 1: So it's all basically lends to support to the idea
Speaker 1: that it sank nose first. We don't have a lot
Speaker 1: more clarity about why that happened. Divers have pulled up
Speaker 1: a number of artifacts from the ship, including its nameplates,
Speaker 1: and as we said before, the wheel. Today it's actually
Speaker 1: a popular stop for recreational divers. In nineteen thirteen, Chicago
Speaker 1: put up its first Christmas tree and daily plaza in
Speaker 1: memory of the Ralph Simmons and the crew. More than
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand people came out on Christmas Eve to
Speaker 1: pay tribute. There's also a plaque in commemoration on the
Speaker 1: Clark Street Bridge. In spite of this tragedy, Barbara and
Speaker 1: her daughters continued to sell Christmas tree is, continuing to
Speaker 1: ship them by schooner for a number of years, and
Speaker 1: the practice of bringing Christmas trees into Chicago on schooners
Speaker 1: actually stopped completely by nineteen twenty. Sometime in that window,
Speaker 1: the Schotamans started sending the trees by train and then
Speaker 1: selling them from a schooner in the port the shoot.
Speaker 1: Him and daughters continued to sell trees from the family's
Speaker 1: lot for a few years after Barbara died in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty three. In December of nineteen thirty four, they actually
Speaker 1: set up a Christmas tree shop in Chicago that they
Speaker 1: called Captain and Mrs Schunman's Daughters. That was the only
Speaker 1: year that they did that. There continue to be ghost
Speaker 1: stories about the Rows Simmons that people saw rats leaving
Speaker 1: its hole before it sets sail in nineteen twelve, and
Speaker 1: that it continues to sail the waters of Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: People also claim that they can smell the scent of
Speaker 1: evergreens at Barbara Schumann's Chicago grave site and today, which
Speaker 1: is I think one of the reasons that people ask
Speaker 1: us to do this episode so often the US Coast
Speaker 1: Guard cutter Mackinaw carries a load of more than a
Speaker 1: thousand Christmas trees to Chicago every year for distribution among
Speaker 1: Chicago's poor in commemoration of the Rows Simmons. So it's
Speaker 1: become this Chicago tradition that has gone on for a while. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I think some of I know for sure this
Speaker 1: is not a thing. I know for sure that some
Speaker 1: of the people who requested it sort of wanted to
Speaker 1: know the story behind this tradition without already knowing that
Speaker 1: it involved the a shipwreck with the loss of all
Speaker 1: aboard writing Christmas time. So now we know. You know,
Speaker 1: they're seemingly fun in a hurry. Yeah, it's We've had
Speaker 1: a series lately where in some cases we knew it
Speaker 1: was going to be sad before we started, but we
Speaker 1: didn't realize how sad, or in the case of this one,
Speaker 1: did not really know that it was going to be sad,
Speaker 1: and then it turned out sad. Uh. Do you have
Speaker 1: unsad listener mail? Perhaps? Do you have listener mail? I
Speaker 1: don't remember which when I picked today and whether it
Speaker 1: is sad or not, but but it is about shipwrecks
Speaker 1: because it comes from our episode about this submarine S five,
Speaker 1: which several people have written to let me know that
Speaker 1: a submarine is a boat and target the ship that
Speaker 1: it targets the ship, so you don't call a submarine
Speaker 1: a ship, which I think we did in the episode,
Speaker 1: because I didn't know that me either. This is from Thomas,
Speaker 1: and Thomas says I enjoyed the S five episode and
Speaker 1: all the others too. Dying in the water is probably
Speaker 1: my second biggest fear of death two. But first isn't
Speaker 1: drifting into outer space, which is what I said. Mine was.
Speaker 1: It's dying in a fire and would probably feel about
Speaker 1: the same. I'm sure you've gotten all kinds of feedback
Speaker 1: with various other great acts of calm under fire prompted
Speaker 1: by the captain's hell by compass comment. My favorite is
Speaker 1: from Captain Al Haynes as he was cleared to land
Speaker 1: United Flight two three two in Sioux City, Iowa, July.
Speaker 1: As with the sub commander's comment, one just needs a
Speaker 1: little context to appreciate the gravity of the situation, maybe
Speaker 1: in a black hole being too recent to be part
Speaker 1: of quote history and too far back for you to
Speaker 1: remember so here is the high level. The DC ten
Speaker 1: heavy set out of Denver and had two hundred and
Speaker 1: ninety six souls on board. It was just beginning to
Speaker 1: be sequenced for its arrival in Chicago. It was over
Speaker 1: Iowa a catastrophic failure rendered one of three engines and
Speaker 1: all control surfaces inoperative. There is no car analogy, because
Speaker 1: the car lives in two D land, not three D
Speaker 1: and can just stop. The closest you might come is
Speaker 1: thinking about a car's steering locking up and the accelerator
Speaker 1: being stuck wide open, and you're leaning one way or
Speaker 1: the other to try to influence the direction. That is
Speaker 1: not an exaggeration. I heard the captain speak in an
Speaker 1: aviation seminar. He said that when they reached the base
Speaker 1: on the radio to ask for help and describe the situation,
Speaker 1: the base reassured them that they didn't under stand what
Speaker 1: was wrong, because if the situation was as they said,
Speaker 1: the plane would have long since crashed. Compound the situation
Speaker 1: with the next forty minutes of pressure mounting as they
Speaker 1: bobbed through the skies of Iowa. Able to modestly control
Speaker 1: left hand turns with engine differential, the three guys in
Speaker 1: the cockpit carrying the other two people's lives in their hands.
Speaker 1: You can see the desperation of the situation. So finally,
Speaker 1: near the end of the ordeal with Sioux City Insight,
Speaker 1: the air traffic controller clears them to land quote on
Speaker 1: any runway and Captain Haines response, you want to be
Speaker 1: particular and make it a runway. Huh. Some transcriptions add
Speaker 1: notation that there was a chuckle in his voice. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that's my favorite cool under fire quote. By the way,
Speaker 1: his leadership in the event saved over a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty lives. Thank you so much for sending this story, Thomas.
Speaker 1: Although I was old enough during this event that in
Speaker 1: theory I could have remembered it, I do not remember it,
Speaker 1: probably because for many years I had a phobia of
Speaker 1: air travel and I studiously avoided all news about any
Speaker 1: kind of air disaster. Um that which I think. I
Speaker 1: think He's sent a separate email that included uh, footage
Speaker 1: of the crash itself, And even though I am now
Speaker 1: able to fly and it's I'm usually pretty okay, I
Speaker 1: was like, no, I'm not looking at that. I love
Speaker 1: that quotes there, So thank you so much, Thomas for
Speaker 1: sending it. If you would like to write to us
Speaker 1: with an episode request, or another Christmas tree story, or
Speaker 1: another airplane story or anything else. You can were a
Speaker 1: history podcast that how stuffworks dot com. We're also on
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Speaker 1: It is at missed in History at spreadshirt dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to learn a little more
Speaker 1: about what we talked about today, you can come to
Speaker 1: our parent company's website that is how stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Put the word Christmas Trees in the search bar. You
Speaker 1: will find how Christmas Trees Work, which includes some of
Speaker 1: the history of Christmas Trees. You can also come to
Speaker 1: our website, which is missing history dot com, and you
Speaker 1: will find uh show notes on all of our episodes
Speaker 1: and all of the episodes themselves in a giant archive
Speaker 1: and other cool stuff so you can do all of
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