In 1912, the Grinch didn’t ruin Christmas — a tragic shipwreck did.

For more than two decades around the turn of the century, a German immigrant named Herman Schuenemann engaged in an unlikely seasonal trade. Every autumn, he would sail schooners from Chicago north to Michigan’s forested shores, load roughly 5,000 fir trees and return to Chicago to sell them directly from the Clark Street Bridge dock.  His prices were low, and he gave away about 10% of his cargo to families who couldn’t afford to buy a tree.

The Evening Post, the predecessor to today’s New York Post, described him in 1912 as a square-built, cheerful man who inspired trust at first sight.

In 1910, Schuenemann purchased a share in the Rouse Simmons, a three-masted vessel that would become his final command.

By 1912, Captain Santa was sailing on borrowed time. The Rouse Simmons was 44 years old at that point, an ancient vessel in an industry already dying. Steam-powered ships had made wooden schooners obsolete and railroads could deliver Christmas trees faster and cheaper than sailing vessels. Many captains had quit the dangerous late-season crossings on Lake Michigan.

“A ship like the Simmons should not have been out in the lake,” Dr. Theodore Karamanski, a Professor of History at Loyola University in Chicago and author of the upcoming “Great Lake: An Unnatural History of Lake Michigan,” told The Post. “She was too old and had suffered from neglect over the course of the previous several years.”

Schuenemann kept sailing anyway. “He had previously filed for bankruptcy and was once again in debt,” Karamanski explained. “Desperation was part of the reason for his risky voyage.”

On November 22, 1912, the heavily loaded schooner departed Thompson Harbor near Manistique, Michigan, into deteriorating weather. A gale swept down from the northwest, bringing sleet and snow. The wet snow added dangerous weight to the trees piled high on deck.

The next afternoon, a surfman at the Kewaunee Life-Saving Station spotted the Rouse Simmons about five miles offshore, flying her flag at half-mast — the universal distress signal. Observers believed the ship might run before the wind and make harbor to the south.

The ship was never seen again.

The Evening Post reported the tragedy, noting that another chapter had been added to the long list of Great Lakes disasters. All of the crew, estimated to be between a dozen and 16 men, were presumed lost.

In the days that followed, Christmas trees washed ashore. Wreckage drifted to beaches from Michigan to Wisconsin. Captain Schuenemann’s wallet, preserved in oilskin, was pulled up in a fishing net in 1924. But the Rouse Simmons herself remained lost until 1971, when a diver discovered the wreck in 172 feet of water off Two Rivers, Wisconsin.

Remarkably, the Christmas trees still filled the hold.

Chicago felt the loss deeply. On the morning after Schuenemann’s expected arrival, crowds gathered at the Clark Street dock as they had for decades, waiting for that familiar sight: a schooner’s mast with a Christmas tree lashed to the top, appearing over the horizon.

Hours passed. The crowd gradually dispersed until only a little girl and her father remained. According to Chicago folklore, when Ruthie Erickson’s father tried to convince her to go home, she replied: “Dad, without a Christmas tree, there is no Christmas.”

The Christmas tree ship trade never recovered. The Schuenemann daughters continued selling trees for a time, eventually by railroad rather than schooner. By 1920, the age of Christmas tree ships had ended entirely.

“The Rouse Simmons was by no means unique as the ’Christmas Tree Ship,’ save perhaps that it was due to her sorry end as the last such vessel,” Karamanski said. “Beginning in 1876 with the homely scow schooner with the felicitous name of Reindeer, there were numerous vessels that brought Christmas trees across the lake. Over the years more than eighty vessels were used to bring Christmas trees.”

The wreck of the Rouse Simmons now lies within the boundaries of the Wisconsin Shipwreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary, listed on the National Register of Historic Places — a final resting place for Captain Santa and his crew, and an enduring symbol of the risks sailors once took to bring Christmas to Chicago.

In 2000, the Coast Guard began commemorating the Rouse Simmons annually. Earlier this month, on December 6, the US Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw delivered 1,200 Christmas trees to Chicago’s Navy Pier, continuing a tradition that honors Schuenemann and his crew.

The Evening Post’s sentiment from more than a century ago still resonates — encouraging people lighting their trees to remember the captain who never returned.