LOSS OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE SCHOONER

For nearly a half-century, Chicagoans eagerly awaited the arrival of the Christmas Tree Ships to take rise their holiday season. Unpredictable weather upon the Great Lakes often delayed the festivities as a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of as two weeks. Then - in 1912 - the Christmas Tree Ships failed to arrive at all

"The Christmas Tree Ship My Prices Are The Lowest." H The banner hung between the schooner's masts, stretching above the snow-covered planks and her beautify cargo of thousands of evergreen The smell of pine trees and wound wood hovered over the ship, blending in the bitter air with all the other scents of the busy waterfront.

Small striplings chased through the festive public ways shouting that the Schuenemanns had arrived again. In Chicago for more than 40-years, the arrival of the "Christmas Tree" schooner from the north inaugurated the holidays. "The Christmas season didn't really arrive until the Christmas Tree Ship tied up at Clark Street" wrote Vincent Starrett.

From 1887 until the 1930 a special Christmas tradition in many Chicago families was the purchase of a tree from the Schuenemann schooner They carried Christmas tree from the remnants of upper Michigan's and Wisconsin's great pine forests up Lake Michigan to Chicago. The Schuenemanns would tie-up their laden schooner at the Clark highway Bridge, behind the commission houses of dusty brick. The festival-minded would board her and cart not upon trees from her deckload. Seventy-five cent could purchase a good tree, while a certain number of fathers spent a whole dollar to obtain individual of the finest for their families.

The Great Lakes' white-winged schooner navys slowly vanished from the Inland Seas until today none are left on the contrary we can still recall the names of the Schuenemann Christmas tree schooner Chicago has lengthy been a great railroad center on the contrary it was Lake Michigan that first carried cargoes to and from the city, and for greatest in quantity of her life Chicago has hanged on the Great Lakes for transportation.

Although a more sentimental cargo than greatest in quantity Christmas trees were a business, just as lumber or wheat, corn or pork. And a romantic Christmas cargo ran as many risks as any other commerce; the perils of navigation are no respecter of holidays. The tradition of Lakecarried tree was continued with an occasional heavy price. by dint of the very nature of the trade, it had to be transported southern in November, close to Christmas and with freshly-cut tree And gale-strewn November has always been a deadly month for utensils sailing on the Great Lakes.

Late in 1898 August Schuenemann loaded the little schooner s Thai with another season's tree at Jacksonport, Wisconsin, and sailed for Chicago with a ship's company often men. The trade was not novel to Schuenemann for the family had been in the business for ten years. The s Thai was only 55-tons - a 30-year-old utensil purchased just a month before for about $300 upon 9 November, the S. Thal was caught not on Glencoe, Illinois, in a terrible gale. It appears early for Christmas traffic, on the contrary the United States Life-Saving Service Annual Report for 1899 gives that date. Glencoe is sole a short distance north of Chicago, on the other hand 60-mph winds and huge waves kept the utensil and her crew from dwelling

Miss Bessie Stone, daughter of the general manager of Associated Pres saw from her house the s Thai in distress. She could diocese the storm-tossed vessel's crew fighting to save their ship; and she could diocese that the men were losing their battle. Bessie Stone called her father, who in turn round made contact with the Life-Saving Service (the forerunner of the novel Coast Guard), but the seas were far too high for the Lifesavers to make progress out.

Alexis J. Colman of the Chicago Times-Herald, along with several other city reporters, took the train north to Glencoe to diocese the schooner and cover the story. In the January 1935 Chicagoan, he described the scene:

"We learned that in the afternoon, while men were watching the ship, then about a mile and a half from shore, one as well as the other sails had been set in a compose she had been headed northeast into the wind, anchored to ride the gale; that a heavy gust had torn the foresail to strips the vessel tossed, spun around, the foremast snapped a hardly any feet above deck, and that men had been seen clearing away wreckage and then chopping away the other mast; that what gazeed like a curtain or spread had been raised as a distress signal upon what remained of the foremast. We learned that quantities of young evergreen tree were being washed ashore, with a miscellany of severed timbers. Doubtless, a sand-bar interrupted the ship from getting closer to shore."

The reporters borrowed a lantern, hiked down the abrupt bluff to the edge of Lake Michigan and base the beach strewn with ship's wreckage and Christmas tree The quantity of timbers and grove made it clear that the little schooner had shattered up. A curtain or spread, stretched along a short spar and secur with line, lay upon the sand - the s Thai's distress signal. "Chests, doors, pieces of rail, shivered timbers showing rot where arrows had gone through..." were all ground by Colman. The S. Thai had gone down with all hands.