Christmas Ship Delivers Trees From Michigan To Chicago

By Amy Cavanaugh in News on Dec 1, 2012 7:00PM

WBEZ has a video up of the Christmas Ship, which brought 1,300 Christmas trees from Cheboygan, Mich. to needy families in Chicago on Friday.

This is a longstanding annual tradition, which began in the 1800s, when Christmas trees became popular. There were once many ships that sailed the trees over Lake Michigan to Chicago—until 1912, when a Christmas ship was lost in a storm.

On November 22 of 1912, the Rouse Simmons sailed out from Thompson, Mich. The ship carried close to 5,000 trees, and one observer said it looked like a "floating forest." Chicago was at the other end of Lake Michigan, 300 miles away.

The next afternoon, a hundred miles down the Wisconsin coast, a snowstorm was moving in. An officer at the Kewaunee rescue station observed a schooner on the lake flying a distress flag. He sent out the station's power boat to help. But the heavy weather and gathering darkness made it impossible to locate the schooner.

The Rouse Simmons never reached Chicago. Putting the pieces together later, authorities concluded that the missing ship was the schooner flying the distress flag near Kewaunee. Most likely it had gone down in the storm.

The disappearance of the Rouse Simmons hastened the end of the Christmas Tree ships. Within a few years trains and trucks were being used to bring the evergreens to Chicago.

In recent years, the Coast Guard has taken over the tradition. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the loss of the Rouse Simmons.

Here's the video.

Chicago's Christmas Tree Ship re-enacts 100-year tradition from WBEZ on Vimeo.