By Dan Patrinos

Once a year members of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society pay tribute to those who have lost their lives on the Great Lakes.

Although a prayer is recited to commemorate the crew and lumberjacks who perished when their schooner, the Rouse Simmons, went down in a storm – it seeks rapport with all who lost their lives in the freshwater inland seas bordering parts of the United States and Canada.

More than six thousand commercial shipwrecks are known in the Great Lakes, about seven hundred alone in Lake Michigan and another five hundred in Lake Superior, Wisconsin’s two border lakes. Shipwrecks have resulted in an untold number of deaths: the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula estimates the number at thirty thousand.

Jack Godden wrote the Society’s prayer in 1999. He was a landlubber whose eyesight disqualified him from attending the U.S. Naval Academy, but whose fascination with maritime history gave him a beneficient vision.

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Jack retired from the U.S. Forest Service in 1987. His love affair with nature — at a point in his career he was in charge of fighting forest fires in California — appears to have been the summons to write a prayer about a ship disaster. That ship, the Rouse Simmons, better known as the Christmas Tree Ship, was laden with thousands of evergreens from Michigan’s northwoods. She was on her way to Chicago when she sank in a wintry gale.

Apparently snow and ice added to the ship’s burden, causing the 205-ton, three-masted schooner to founder. Already old at forty-four, the ship disappeared beneath the waves of Lake Michigan off Wisconsin’s northeastern shore in November 1912. Seventeen souls lost their lives.

Jack’s wife Dottie told me that he grew up romping in pastures and woodlands in Oswego, N.Y., near Lake Ontario. After being denied entrance to the Naval Academy, he gained admission to New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University.

His job took him to posts around the country, before being assigned to Milwaukee in 1977, to retire ten years later. It was then that Jack began volunteering for the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, working as a curator and an artifacts preservationist. His many other endeavors included assisting with an inventory of trees in the village of Fox Point. By 2015, when he capped his long service, Jack had logged 6,078 hours of service to the Society.

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During that time he learned about the floating forest, the Rouse Simmons, and her Christmas trees.

For years, local fishermen had been snagging their nets in an area off Two Rivers, Wis. They related their stories to Milwaukee scuba diver Gordon Kent Bellrichard, who was searching for a steamer that had sunk in 1887. When his sonar made a promising contact, he later discovered it was the Rouse Simmons. The ship was standing, in a near upright position, in one hundred and seventy-two feet of water. Bare, needleless trees were scattered about. He had solved the mystery of what happened to the Christmas Tree Ship and its crew. That was in October 1971.

Dottie said Jack grew up close to nature and later cared for the land and natural resources as a forester. She said her late husband developed an empathic tie to the ship’s Captain Herman E. Schuenemann and crew, and the trees they were carrying. His prayer became an outlet for his deep feelings about trees and the loss of life.

As we ride out the pandemic, Society members and friends won’t be sitting down to their traditional holiday dinner at the Milwaukee Yacht Club this month. Jack’s prayer won’t be read aloud. Incandescent with tiny white lights, the Rouse Simmons’ anchor is ensconced outside near the club’s front door. A plaque notes that Bellrichard recovered the anchor in 1973 and that Courtland R. Conlee, a member of the Society and commodore of the Milwaukee Yacht Club from 1958 to 1959, presented it to the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society in June 1974.

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As we celebrate the holidays this year — subdued and tempered, as they may be  — Carl Eisenberg, the Society’s president, hopes people will reflect on the tragedies Jack’s prayer memorializes:

                                       Oh, Great God creator of Earth – its lands and waters

Rest the souls of all lost in the waters of the Great Lakes

In memory of Captain Herman Schuenemann, his crew members and his wood cutters

On board the Rouse Simmons in route to Chicago from Manistique Michigan

Today we commemorate their loss in the gales of Lake Michigan on November 23, 1912.

May they rest in Peace,

May pure, quiet waters, and soft breezes guide their way in eternity.

Amen

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Caption for photo on this page: Jack and Dottie Godden with the brass fog bell from the Milwaukee Harbor light, loaned by WMHS to North Point Lighthouse, Milwaukee. The 800-pound bell is exhibited in the lighthouse keeper’s quarters. The bell had been at the Pierhead Light at the entrance of the Milwaukee Harbor from 1892 to 1962.

View photos of the Rouse Simmons by underwater photographer and diver Cal Kothrade, the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society’s Shipwreck Ambassador:

– Jack Godden’s 2001 memo on why he became a volunteer

As the 2021 Christmas season approached, Jack Godden’s wife, Dottie, sent me greetings and a memo she found that helped explain her husband’s deep interest in nature. In it he explained why he took such an interest in Great Lakes marine history. He joined the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society in 1985, and on Sept. 8, 1987, he became a weekly Tuesday volunteer in the Great Lakes Marine Collection workroom at the Milwaukee Public Library. Here’s part of what he said in his memo of Sept. 29, 2001. – Dan Patrinos

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My Years with the WMHS

One might ask, why volunteering and why the interest in the Great Lakes marine history?

In my youth I had the wonderful experience of growing up in Oswego, N.Y., a quarter mile from the Oswego River and the Barge Canal, and two miles from Lake Ontario, all within walking or bicycling distance.

I learned to swim at the age of 8. I fished Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. I remember catching a lake trout before the lampreys took their toll, and a 13 pound Muskie!

During the summer I was swimming in the river, catching rides on the barges going up the river, or aiding a yacht owner through Lock No. 6 so he didn’t mar his fenders with the green moss on the sides of the locks. “Old Man Kelley with a pimple on his belly” was the lock tender. He knew me and my father, so there was no misbehaving at his lock.

In my freshman year in high school one of our history textbooks was The Story of Oswego, New York, written by our high school principal, Ralph Faust. I learned of the Iroquois Nation, the French, Dutch and British fur traders, the French and Indian War, the British building their first armed sailing vessels on the Lakes in 1755, and their final departure from Fort Ontario at Oswego in 1796.

The British were back in Oswego in the War of 1812 and finally left us “New Americans” to develop our new nation and build the Erie and Oswego canals in the 1820’s that opened up water ways for the flood of immigrants that followed westward over the Great Lakes.

With this background I found an interest to volunteer in the Milwaukee Public Library where I was to have access to the “hidden treasures” of the Great Lakes Marine Collection.

– Jack Godden
September 29, 2001

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Dan Patrinos is a retired journalist. He is a member of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society and lives in Milwaukee.