Rouse Simmons
The story of the schooner Rouse Simmons, a Muskegon-owned lumber boat better known as the "Christmas Tree Ship," has some added chapters after a diving expedition over the summer probed the site where the vessel went down in Lake Michigan 84 years ago.
The three-masted schooner with a crew of 17 apparently was not going straight south, driven by the gale winds from the north, but was trying to head for a safe harbor when it plunged bow first under the waves. The ship was believed to be carrying more than 5,000 Christmas trees, piled in the hold and lashed to the deck, on the voyage from Manistique, Mich., to downtown Chicago, where Capt. Herman Schuenemann would sell the trees for 50 cents to $1 each or give them away to needy families.
The Rouse Simmons was a three-masted schooner, 153 feet long. It was built in 1868 for $14,000 in Milwaukee, and was named after Kenosha industrialist Rouse Simmons, of Simmons mattress. After two years with the Simmons family, the ship was sold to Muskegon lumber baron Charles Hackley. For more than 20 years, the Rouse Simmons was a fixture of Muskegon, hauling virgin Michigan white pine from Muskegon to Chicago. The Rouse Simmons was sold by Hackley in 1908 and was used to ship wood products from Beaver Island. In 1910, Schuenemann purchased the Rouse Simmons.
When the Rouse Simmons set sail on Nov. 21, 1912, the weather was deteriorating. The ship was spotted more than a day later, its sails in tatters and flying a distress flag. A rescue boat couldn't reach it, and it disappeared, along with the entire crew. For years afterward, commercial fishermen reported finding pine trees tangled in their nets.
November 27, 2006 6:43 AM | Category: Boats