School Visits

Beyond the Classroom 
 

Experience the Christmas Tree Ship story beyond the classroom with these optional family activities (or school group tours): 

1.  Visit Navy Pier in Chicago during the first weekend of December to see the “new” Christmas Tree Ship which began sailing ten years ago in memory of the original ship. The U.S. Coast Guard joined efforts with several charitable organizations (including the United Way and the Salvation Army) to resurrect the spirit of the old ship. Christmas trees from Michigan are loaded on the Coast Guard ship Mackinaw. The trees are then sailed to Chicago where they are given away to poor families in the spirit of Captain Santa from a century ago.  This year’s event is scheduled for Friday, December ___ through Sunday, December ___, with the main program on Saturday, December ____ at 10:00 a.m. (The event always occurs during the first weekend of December each year.) The Mackinaw is festively decorated with lights, and it is crowned with an evergreen erected at the top of the ship.  Tours are available to the general public. 

2.  Tour the Roger’s Street Fishing Village Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The museum has many artifacts from the Christmas Tree Ship on display including the recently restored ship’s wheel.  (The wheel was missing for 87 years. It was found in a fisherman’s net in 1999.) The museum is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day, but does arrange special tours between September and May for school groups. 

3.  Attend a Christmas Tree Ship concert. Several singer/songwriters have written original songs about the loved legend and perform concerts during the holiday season. Illinois singer, Lee Murdock, as well as Michigan singer, Carl Behrend, are two regional artists who are maritime ballad songwriters and perform regularly.  (Please refer to their websites for show schedules. If your music teacher would have an interest in teaching students one of the Christmas Tree Ship songs prior to the author visit, CDs are available for purchase, as well as sheet music.  Some music teachers also share other nautical songs with students prior to the author visit.) 

4.  Attend The Christmas Schooner musical.   This is a wonderful theatrical stage production performed throughout the United States each Christmas season.  The musical has been performed in the following Wisconsin locations during the past few years:  Milwaukee, Antigo, Janesville, Port Washington, Shorewood, Green Bay, Appleton, Fond du Lac, and Door County.   

5.   Watch “The Christmas Tree Ship” television special produced by The Weather Channel.  The show airs nationally on The Weather Channel’s Storm Stories each Christmas season between Thanksgiving and New Years. Author Rochelle Pennington is interviewed during the program. Her research, as included in her two books, was used to help produce the program. (The Weather Channel television program video may be shown to individual classes prior to the author visit.  It is available at Amazon.com.   Other videos on the ship are available through the Wisconsin library system.)      

6.   Visit Pier Wisconsin museum in Milwaukee. The museum is home port to the schooner Denis Sullivan, a replica of the wooden sailing vessel, Rouse Simmons, nicknamed the Christmas Tree Ship. Pier Wisconsin chose to model their ship after three tall ships built in Milwaukee during the 1800s, including the Christmas Tree Ship. The museum spent five years (and over a million dollars) building the wooden vessel which is now used as an educational tool (a “floating classroom”) on the Great Lakes. Visitors to the museum may purchase a ticket to board the vessel for a half-day “hands on” excursion across Lake Michigan during the sailing season.  (Adults $50.00; children $25.00)  School groups may also schedule special tours of the vessel. Passengers on excursions are invited to participate in helping the crew lower and raise the sails, as well as participate in other deck duties, in order to experience firsthand what it felt like to work aboard a schooner in bygone days.   

7.   Visit the Milwaukee Yacht Club and see the anchor from the Christmas Tree Ship which is on permanent display at the club’s entrance.  (The massive anchor was raised from the bottom of Lake Michigan in the 1970s.)   The anchor is decorated with lights each Christmas season, and a memorial wreath honoring the lives lost on the Christmas Tree Ship is hung from the anchor. 

8.   Dive the shipwreck site.  The Christmas Tree Ship is one of the most popular dive sites on Lake Michigan for technical divers (those divers who dive deeper depths with mixed gases). The ship is still loaded with trees at the present time.  Dive lessons, scuba gear rental, and guided excursions to the shipwreck site can be arranged through local dive shops on both sides of Lake Michigan. 

9.   Visit the National Archives Great Lakes Region Museum in Chicago, Illinois. The archives contain several historical documents on Captain Herman Schuenemann and his ship, the Rouse Simmons. Included in their records are the original Life Saving Station logs from the rescue workers at Kewaunee, Wisconsin and Two Rivers, Wisconsin who reported on the ship’s distress in its final moments above water.  Also in permanent safekeeping are census records for Captain Schuenemann, as well as customs and enrollment documents for the ship. (These items are not on display. Please telephone 1-773-948-9001 to arrange for a visit. The records will be pulled for your examination according to a pre-determined reservation time. There is no charge for admission or examination of records.) 

11.  Visit Simmons Island, Simmons Field, and the Gilbert M. Simmons Library in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Each of these properties was the result of donations made by the Simmons family. This Wisconsin family financed the building of the vessel Rouse Simmons which was later nicknamed the Christmas Tree Ship.  The ship was christened the Rouse Simmons in 1868 in honor of the man who financed its building. The Simmons family later went on to found the Simmons Mattress Factory, one of Wisconsin’s oldest manufacturing firms.  (The Wisconsin factory location in Kenosha has since been demolished.)  

12.   Visit historic Algoma, Wisconsin. This picturesque fishing village, located on the shores of Lake Michigan, is approximately 25 minutes from Green Bay, just south of the Door County Peninsula.  Captain Herman Schuenemann was born in Algoma in 1865.  Many of the same buildings that stood in Captain Schuenemann’s youth are still there today.  One of these buildings houses Wisconsin’s oldest winery, the Von Stiehl Winery. Although this building was originally erected near the end of the Civil War to serve as a brewery, the caverns beneath the building, constructed of hand-carved limestone cut from area bedrock, proved to be excellent for wine production in later years. The winery bottled a commemorative Christmas Tree Ship wine for twelve years which honored the city’s native son. A sketch of the Rouse Simmons appeared on the label with the following notation: “Captain Herman Schuenemann of Algoma was skipper of the Rouse Simmons, Lake Michigan’s legendary Christmas Tree Ship.”  (This wine was discontinued in 2007.) Tours of the underground caverns are conducted year-round.

     Algoma, Wisconsin is also home to “Christmas Tree Ship Point,” an area of land located within the inner harbor of Algoma leading out to Lake Michigan. The point, within the proximity of the Algoma lighthouse, was dedicated to all of the Christmas tree vessels and captains who transported trees to Milwaukee and Chicago in the 1800s. A lone evergreen grows at the tip of Christmas Tree Ship Point and is lit with white lights year-round as a memorial to the sailors who lost their lives in the Christmas tree merchant trade. 

Rochelle Pennington’s school programs are particularly popular with the elementary grades when students are learning their state history. 

Christmas tree ornaments are often made by students (with a Christmas Tree Ship theme). 

Pennington tailors her school presentations for each grade accordingly to make the programs age appropriate. 
 

Re:      Creative Writing with a Historic Perspective 
 

Dear Students, 

      Thank you for your interest in the Christmas Tree Ship! I am looking very forward to meeting with you in order to discuss my two historical books on the famous ship, and also to work with you as you use your own creative writing skills to tell an aspect of the legend.  

      In order to familiarize you with the story, I am including a packet of information used in my research. The samples I am forwarding include song lyrics, poetry, newspaper articles, a short story, a letter, and a journal entry. 

      Each of you will have an opportunity to express your unique interpretation of the historical account of the Christmas Tree Ship story through a writing medium of your choice when we meet at your school. 

      Again, I look forward to seeing you soon! 

Sincerely, 

Rochelle M. Pennington, Author 
 

Creative Writing Exercise 

These ideas may be used for older students: 

Use your writing skills to express an aspect of the Christmas Tree Ship story that speaks to you.  After you choose your subject matter, choose an avenue of writing you would like to use as your vehicle to communicate the event.   

Options: 

      1.  Write song lyrics.

      2.  Write a poem.

      3.  Write a newspaper article.

            Decide who you will interview in 1912.  Will it be one of the family members waiting on shore for the missing ship? Will it be one of the Life Saving Station rescue workers who attempted to save the Christmas Tree Ship crew members? Or perhaps you will choose to be a journalist in 1971 and interview the diver who located the ship on the bottom of Lake Michigan after it had been missing for over fifty years.

      4.  Write a journal entry. 

            Decide what role in the story you would like to assume to record your thoughts in journal form.  Will you be one of the sailors on board the ship?  If so, how did you feel when the storm hit?  Will you be a local resident who lived on Lake Michigan when debris began washing ashore—including Christmas trees?  If so, what did you find?

5. Write a letter. 

            Decide what role in the story you would like to assume. Then, decide who you will direct your letter to. 

Outline your ideas before you begin writing your rough draft. 

Also, think about the audience you are writing to, as well as the perspective you will be telling the story from.  What age group are you intending to target?  Will your writing be for a general audience? 

Your subject matter may also be the construction of the ship, or you may discuss the surviving artifacts.  Perhaps you are most interested in the humans at the center of the story and would like to report on Captain Schuenemann or his family members.     

Discuss the research process you used for gathering historical information (interviews with surviving descendants, files located at historical societies, museums, newspapers, or libraries, etc.). 

Teachers may also wish to conduct vocabulary exercises to familiarize students with the less common words used throughout the Christmas Tree Ship story. (Example:  schooner, gale, deckhand, mast, etc.)  Also, teachers may wish to discuss the oral tradition of storytelling used over the past century to share the Christmas Tree Ship story.

The Christmas Ship
(A maritime ballad by Carl Behrend)

Christmas Ship, set your sails.
Christmas Ship, we’ll tell your tales.
But remember, oh, remember
Those November gales.

A northwest wind was starting to blow.
The captain said, “We gotta go!”
“Don’t hesitate, ‘cause we’re running late!”
“Lash those trees out across the deck!”
“We gotta go!”

He was ready to sail out of Manistique,
He’d be back home in a couple of weeks.
Then he kissed his wife and his kids goodbye,
Then he said, with a tear in his eye, “Goodbye.”

Christmas Ship, set your sails.
Christmas Ship, we’ll tell your tales.
But remember, oh, remember
Those November gales.

The Tale of the Christmas Tree
By: Ben Hecht

Dripping and green on the sand it lay
    bright with the drying foam;
Till a fisherman came and took it away
    to his two little boys at home.
And, my, how they laughed in childish glee
    at the sight of the beautiful Christmas tree!

Lighted with candles and laden with toys
    gaily and proudly it stands.
On Christmas Eve, the fisherman’s boys
    are clapping their little hands.
And this is the tale of the Christmas tree
    that came from the grave in an inland sea.

Letter Example:

     One of the letters written by Mrs. Rose Schuenemann, sister-in-law to Barbara Schuenemann, was addressed to Captain A. E. Dow, master of the schooner Augustus of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. She wrote to him inquiring if he had heard any news regarding the whereabouts of Captain Schuenemann’s Christmas Tree Ship.  His response to Rose, dated December 15, 1912, is on file at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.  It reads, in part: “I think that the Simmons went down somewhere north of here. If you see Herman’s wife, tell her that if I can do anything to help her that I am anxious to do so. I am awful sorry for her.”

Look Real Hard
Christmas Tree Ship Long Gone But Still Remembered
Manitowoc Herald newspaper, dated November 24, 1962

    Along about this time of year, off the shores of Kewaunee and Two River, ‘tis said that if you peer through the twilight mists of Lake Michigan hard enough you can see her.
     “She’s out there,” contends a hardy, old freshwater sailor who remembers her well.   “If you look hard enough you can make out her three masts,” he added.
     It was just 50 years ago on November 23 that the schooner Rouse Simmons, laden with Christmas trees, struck a lake squall and was lost at sea.
     She would spread no more cheer, this gallant little schooner of the lakes. She went to the bottom with loss of the entire crew and her cargo of Christmas trees.
     There are those old seamen who claim, however, that the great spirit of the Rouse Simmons returns to the twilight mists of Lake Michigan about this time ever year.
     “She’s not really dead,” whispered one old timer recently. “It’s pretty hard to kill the spirit that was the Rouse Simmons.  She is out there, somewhere, with all her white sails blowing, and she’s still laden with Christmas trees to gladden the hearts of men, women, and children everywhere.”

Short Story Example:

The Christmas Tree Ship 

By:  Rochelle M. Pennington

Copyright 2002 

     The year was 1912. The month, November. Autumn had fallen asleep in northern Michigan, and winter was just rising. It was rising on the land first, then heading into the waters, closing them up, freezing them solid for a while. Not yet, but shortly. There was still time for Captain Schuenemann to make his last sail of the season – a little time, but not much. He needed to hurry if he didn’t want to meet Old Man Winter out on the waters, the worst possible place. He knew this, and was doing just that – hurrying, hurrying. The winds were telling him, and the waves also, “Hurry, Captain, hurry.” Whispering, whispering were these voices around him in those moments at the break of dawn. He listened.

     Then the captain reached a decision: “We sail.” He would delay no further. Thick ropes anchoring the wooden ship to the shore began to be untied.

     Captain Schuenemann was on his way to Chicago with a load of fresh Christmas trees, a majestic cargo of yuletide cheer. Five thousand evergreens filled the ship’s belly, with another five hundred tied to its decks. Pine scented the harbor and those gathered there breathed in deeply this first fragrance of Christmas.

     The last tree brought aboard, a spruce, was then fastened to the tip of the top of the tallest of three sails, as was the particular tradition of this particular ship. From here, this place of honor, it adorned both the vessel and its holiday load, like a star atop a tree, but instead, a tree atop a ship, a crown of sorts, the identifying mark of the Christmas Tree Ship.

     Every Christmas, the captain and his sailing vessel made this voyage, together, down to the Clark Street Bridge in Chicago, just off Michigan Avenue. Captain Schuenemann waited the whole long year for this very journey, his favorite of all. He loved Christmas, and loved delivering his trees to the docks, as he had done since 1887, where he sold them right off his ship for as little as a quarter or as much as a whole dollar. And what a sight his ship was with wreaths hung from every rail!

     To the folks in Chicago who awaited its annual arrival, the ship had become a symbol of Christmas itself, and its blue-eyed captain, a hero. His generosity in giving free Christmas trees away to churches, orphanages, and to any family who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford one, gave cause for him to acquire a nickname: Captain Santa. Hearing it made the ruddy-faced skipper smile, especially when spoken by the children. They’d be waiting for him on the docks when he approached the harbor, edging his ship in, shores parting before it. “Captain Santa’s here! Captain Santa!” they’d shout.

     Soon he’d hear their voices again, and then soon he’d be back home. That is what he told his wife of these many years as she stood there on the pier beside him. She wanted to know about the ship’s return, and his also. She always did. When the waters separated them, her heart from his, his from hers, she wondered when he would be home. And he would tell her the same answer each time he left, “Soon. I’ll be home soon.” It was an unchanging response to her unchanging question. Yet still she asked, and still he answered.

     Then dawn broke forth into day on that November morning, lingering for just a moment in shades of violet, crimson and gold; lingering, this dawn, like the captain’s dear wife on the planks of a paintless pier where she waved goodbye, waving with the waters, “Goodbye, Captain, goodbye.”

     The great ship was set in motion, this 44-year-old aging schooner, weathered and weary, in the twilight of its sailing days. With Chicago somewhere before them, and Thompson’s Landing in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan now behind, the captain’s hands grabbed hold of the wooden wheel with its spokes and spines that would navigate his vessel through unseen passageways in the open waters spreading themselves before him.

     To his crew waiting on deck, Captain Schuenemann called out, “Unleash the sails! Raise ‘em high!” And so they did.

     Oh, to know what comes alive in the heart of a sailor at such a moment as this, to experience the exhilaration of it all!

     Then the captain saw it. It was the one sight he loved more than any other when he was out to sea, this very sight, the sight of seemingly being able to see forever across endless waters and an endless horizon.

     Somewhere out there Chicago lay. The captain knew it. But for now, it appeared not to be so. For now, it looked as if he and his ship, with its sails raised high, could sail on forever into infinity. He embraced the sight with his arms spread wide across the width of the wheel he worked before him. Sail on, Captain, sail on.

     Yes, if there was a sight more beautiful than the horizon, the captain knew not what it was. And he had seen many – especially out here where moonbeams gathered at midnight to dance on a watery floor beneath lanterns hung high in the sky. And he would dance with them, this captain, shuffling his feet on the deck to music he alone could hear – gulls singing lullabies on the shore and foghorns calling out in deep-throated voices.

     Then slumber would beckon to him, and he would sleep in Life’s arms as it rocked him, back and forth, back and forth. In the great rocking chair of the waters, the captain would be rocked to a rhythm of heartbeats, the water’s and his own. Tide in, tide out. Breath in, breath out. Sleep now, Captain, sleep.

     But on that November 23^rd morning of 1912, sleep was the furthest thing from the captain’s mind. He was awake, wide-eyed awake, acutely aware of the signs around him.

     From where he stood at the helm of his ship, he turned around, again and again, looking over his shoulder, watching the gray sky behind him darken. This was no passing glance he gave the sky and its warning, but a fixed stare, worry creasing itself deeply into his brow. This changing sky meant something, and the changing current that pulled itself around him did, too. They were silent sirens telling him, “Run, Captain, run.” Winter had awoken, and it was coming for him.

     Winds were rising higher and higher, temperatures were falling lower and lower, and forty foot waves were crashing over breaker walls along shorelines just past. Ahead of these heavy seas Captain Schuenemann was running, his only choice. He couldn’t turn back, it was too late for that. His ship was already taking on snow and ice from the blizzard that was wrapping itself around it. Winter was chasing him down in the most ferocious of ways, closing in on him in the form of a mid-lateral cyclone. This was the term weathermen later used to explain what happened out there on the waters when the sky turned black and the world turned white, and Winter caught the captain.

     A crew of rescue workers on duty at the United States Lifesaving Station (a predecessor organization of the Coast Guard) in Kewaunee, Wisconsin, picked up the captain’s distress signals and radioed south to the Two Rivers station where a crew headed into the storm to help the ship, coming close enough – within an eighth of a mile – to catch sight of the battered vessel coated in ice, and iced in snow. Then a blinding squall of white passed between the two, eliminating all visibility with its heavy curtain of snow. When it passed, the Christmas Tree Ship had vanished.

     Yes, those brave rescue workers almost made it, but Winter made it first, bearing down upon the loaded ship with the full force of its weight. The Christmas Tree Ship could no longer sustain itself above the waters, and so, with the weight of a single snowflake more, it sunk below.

     Two weeks and six days later, fishermen came across a corked bottle floating in waters near Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

     Within, on a torn sheet of paper ripped from Captain Schuenemann’s own log, was written his farewell address: “Everybody, goodbye. I guess we are thru. Leaking badly. God help us. Signed: Herman Schuenemann.”

     Newspapers broke the story, including the headline printed in the Friday, December 13, 1912 issue of the Chicago American: Lost Ship’s Story Told in a Bottle.

     It had taken two weeks and six days to find the bottle, but for the ship itself, it would take another fifty-eight years. A scuba diver came across the wreckage quite by accident while searching for another sunken vessel off the coast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin in 1971. There she was, the Christmas Tree Ship, intact and sitting upright on the bottom of Lake Michigan. He recognized the legendary ship immediately, its trees still fastened to its deck, secured there, just as they had been that fateful day long ago, preserved in the frigid waters. This unshovelled grave of the captain had been marked by a tree, as if a grave upon the land, marked by a spruce, fastened to the tip of the top of the tallest of three sails way back when.

     And so it was, that such a tree as this was fastened to a sail on another old, wooden ship being loaded with evergreens the following November of 1913 at Thompson’s Landing. This voyage had been chartered by a woman of remarkable courage who stood on the planks of the same paintless pier where she had stood a year earlier, almost to the very day. Her name was Barbara, the captain’s beloved wife, and under her eye, evergreens were going aboard this ship until it was time for her to begin her journey. And then she did.

     Stepping off the pier and onto this vessel named Fearless, she and her precious cargo of white pine and balsam and fir were bound for Chicago where the city was waiting. They had heard, you see, that Mrs. Santa was on her way.

     When her schooner sailed in, the people of Chicago were gathered on the docks just off of Michigan Avenue to welcome the Captain’s darling. They came by carriage and they came by sleigh and they came on foot, whole families hand-in-hand, to buy an evergreen from this noble woman who chose to stand in the gap between the past and the present and become heir to the tradition that was a part of their holiday and a part of their hearts.

     For the next twenty-one years, Mrs. Herman Schuenemann set sail in November to honor her husband’s memory and his love of the Christ of Christmas, the everlasting hope he held fast to for all of his days like a great wheel navigating him onward.

     Somewhere out there, heaven lay. The captain knew it, for the horizon had shown him it was so through the one sight he loved more than any other when he was out to sea. This hope of life eternal, of life evermore, guided his heart. It was his soul’s compass, its beacon, its North Star.

     “I’ll be home soon,” the captain told his dear Barbara when they waved goodbye to one another for the last time.

     And so he was. It just hadn’t been clear to which home he would be returning that day. It would be the eternal one that unfolded itself around him in those moments when his ship went down and his soul went up, and he was carried by his hope to A Place More Beautiful.

     Here, beyond the horizon, from the ship of his soul, the captain sails through the unseen passageways of eternity and looks upon forever, and ever and ever.

     Sail on, Captain, sail on. 
 

Book Order Form (for school visits) 

     Author Rochelle Pennington will be a guest at school name on date.   Mrs. Pennington is the author of two books on the Christmas Tree Ship, considered one of the most loved legends of the Great Lakes.  The story has been the subject of paintings, poems, stories, and songs for the past century.

     Autographed copies of Pennington’s two titles will be made available to students and teachers at the time of her presentation.  Personalized inscriptions are available on request.  Please use the order form below to indicate the exact inscription you would like for your book(s).  Order forms must be returned to school by date along with your check payable to Rochelle Pennington. Each book ordered will include an “Autographed” gold sticker on the book cover.

     Additional information regarding Rochelle Pennington’s books can be viewed at www.RochellePenningtonBooks and OFCBook.com. 

Example autographs:

To:   Jessica

It was wonderful meeting you at school name on date.

Blessings, Rochelle Pennington 

To:  Jessica

With love from Dad and Mom

Blessings, Rochelle Pennington 

Book #1

The Christmas Tree Ship by Rochelle Pennington               

An “all age” coffeetable gift book that tells the majesty of the story in short story form

ISBN 1-930596-19-7     $16.95     Hardcover giftbook with book jacket   32 pages  Full color   8 x 8 inches

Color illustrations by Charles Vickery, one of the foremost marine painters in the world. 

Book #2

The Historic Christmas Tree Ship by Rochelle Pennington  

A documentary account of the story examining the legend from every angle.

ISBN 0-9740810-1-9     $17.95     Softcover   325 pages       B&W       8 ½ x 11 inches

Text contains over fifty historic photographs as well as hundreds of vintage newspaper articles. 
 

****************************************************************

# of copies of Book #1  _______The Christmas Tree Ship                  $16.95 each

Inscription requested:               .90 tax

                                                         $17.85 total 
 
 
 

# of copies of Book #2   _______The Historic Christmas Tree Ship    $17.95 each

Inscription requested:                .95 tax

                            $18.90 total