Captain Santa. I'm Rebecca Lebe. I'm Jason Horton. And this is Ghost Town.

On a drizzly overcast day in late October 1971, Milwaukee scuba diver Gordon Kent Bell Richard

was looking for a sunken ship called the Vernon, using sonar to survey the bottom of Lake

Michigan's west coastal waters. Soon his sonar made a promising contact, and he descended to what appeared to be an

upright, well-preserved ship 172 feet deep. But the wreck was not what Bell Richard expected. Without

proper light, the diver surveyed the wreckage by feeling along its hull. Soon Bell Richard quickly realized

that he had not discovered the Vernon,

but a ship of legend, the Rouse Simmons, a Christmas tree ship that had disappeared in November

1912. Bell Richard's discovery ended decades of mystery that surrounded the fate of one of the most

legendary ships and its much-loved captain. Today we're talking about the great Christmas tree

shipwreck and its skipper, Captain Santa. On November 23rd, 1912, Lake Michigan was in the midst of a

storm, with ships desperately sailing for safety. One of these ships was a three-masted schooner

named the Rouse Simmons, filled with

thousands of evergreen trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, bound for Christmas sails in Chicago.

Soon, Thanksgiving came and went, and with no sign of the ship, families of the crew began to

fear they'd be mourning and not celebrating over the holidays, especially the family

of Herman Schooneman. In 1910, entrepreneur Herman Schooneman bought stock in the Rouse Simmons.

In the decades leading up to the Simmons' demise, Christmas had become a booming industry.

The Schooneman brothers, Herman and August, had been selling Christmas trees in

Chicago since around the start of the 20th century. Though August died in November 1898 aboard the

S. Thal, a 52-ton two-masted schooner, his younger brother Herman continued the family business

with the rouse. Schuneman cut out the middleman, selling his trees for between 50 cents to a dollar,

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