Excerpted from:


http://www.leemurdock.com/html/dep009.html



The Christmas Ship is a song Lee wrote to retell one of the most moving
stories from Lake Michigan lore. The Rouse Simmons was a lumber
schooner captained by Herman Schuenemann. Every November, at the end of
the logging season, Captain Schuenemann would make one final voyage
from Michigan to Chicago, with a load of freshly cut new growth pines.
With an eye for drama, he would sell these Christmas trees right off
his boat, docked on the Chicago River. In 1912, the Rouse Simmons was
lost with all hands in a storm off Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and the loss
cast a shadow on the Chicago Christmas that year. But for the next 22
years, his widow, Barbara Schuenemann, made the voyage, and carried on
the tradition of the Christmas Tree Ship.