August and Herman Schuenemann, tree captains of Lake Michigan

64 Pages·1993·7.757 MB·French

by  Fred Neuschel

August and Herman
SCHUENEMANN
Tree Captains of Lake Michigan
Fred Neuschel
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AUGUST AND HERMAN
SCHUENEMANN
TREE CAPTAINS OF LAKE MICHIGAN
Fred Neuschel
Printed by Algoma Printing Co., Inc.
Algoma, Wisconsin
July 1993
Copyrighted 1993 by Fred Neuschel
All rights of reproduction reserved by author.
Dedicated to Sue
who encouraged and supported
and waited.
No better partner for life's
voyage could be found.

1
The Tree Captains
At forty years old the wooden hulled schooner
CALEDONIA sat moldering in the Root River at Racine. When
she was built in i 861 her petite dimensions and shallow draft
made her just right for trading among the ports of the Great
Lakes where good harbors were few and rivers were often
blocked by sand bars. By 1901, however, her best years were
long behind her. In the parlance of lake sailors, she was a
"berry-crate," a term synonymous with "leaky as a sieve."
That fall a man from Kenosha, Hans Peterson, bought
the veteran CALEDONIA from her Racine owners and with
crewmen Michael Michelson and Nels Anderson sailed off to
Boyne City, Michigan, tar across the lake to the northwest at a
time of year when sub-zero temperatures and gale force winds
could be expected at almost any hour. The "Sturgeon Bay
Advocate" announced their intentions matter-of-factly: "Kenosha
parties have purchased the retired Racine schooner Caledonia,
and are fitting her out for a cargo of Christmas trees."
Barely more than two weeks later the CALEDONIA and
her three brave seamen had taken on a mixed cargo of slab
wood, potatoes and cut pines, and had sailed out from the
of
protected waters of Lake Charlevoix into the throws a
northwesterly gale. They had no sooner released the tug which
had towed them out into Lake Michigan than the men regretted
what they had done. Shouts to summon the little steamer back
to their aid were to no avail. Several hours out into the lake,
the aged hull began to take in water. After three hours of
constant pumping the trio knew that saving the little schooner
was hopeless. Two hours later they sta.ked their fate on the
decision that they would be safer in the yawl pulling for the
Michigan shore than they were in the waterlogged CALEDONIA.
It was five o'clock in the morning and the seas were running
high. Still, the sailors had made the smart choice. The
CALEDONIA capsized before she was out of their sight.
2
Through the early morning hours the three struggled to
reach shore while being pummeled by fierce winds and freezing
spray. Michelson and Peterson were frost bitten and paralyzed
by the cold. Only Anderson was able to stay active enough to
man the sculling oar at the stern of their small craft. Were it not
for him, they would all have surely died.
Near first light a steamer passed them in the distance.
A bit later another vessel went by, oblivious to their fate. Then,
at long last, the schooner BURTON (some sources say steamer
BURTON) came alongside and took the three Scandinavian
American sailors aboard.
Four days after they had left Michigan with their cargo of
trees and spuds their saviors delivered them safely to Milwaukee.
There they told their story of coming near to death; and, still
partially incapacitated by the damage they had suffered from the
cold, started home to Kenosha. Their 011ly consolation might
have been that they had fared better than their vessel. The
schooner CALEDONIA had come ashore in pieces near Glenn
Haven, Michigan.
Had it not been for their ill fate, the crew of the
CALEDONIA would never have been known. The arrival of their
vessel in Milwaukee would have merited some such brief
mention in the newspaper as this: "The schooner CALEDONIA
has arrived with a load of Christmas trees from Michigan. Local
markets will soon have the greens for sale to the public at
reasonable prices." But when the trees were gone, the men
would have returned unnoticed to Kenosha and the leaky old
schooner would likely have settled into the mud on the bottom
of some Wisconsin river.
Like the vessels themselves, the maritime Christmas tree
trade on the Great Lakes has left few traces behind, except for
a couple of tales which have been so often repeated and so
ornately spun out that fact and fiction have become almost
inseparable. In truth, however, there were dozens, even scores,
of schooners on Lake Michigan alone which at one time or
another played a part in this holiday tradition. Nor was the
practice limited to this lake, or even the Great Lakes. In the
northeast, coastal sailors used schooners to bring evergreens
from the northern forests of Maine to the cities which stood along
New England's shore.