The Ice King
How a young American Businessman made a fortune selling ice
I was once talking to a friend about how I have never seen natural snowfall, as I have never lived anywhere where it got colder than freezing temperature. That made me wonder that before we had invented refrigeration, there must have been people who would have never even seen ice in their lifetimes! How crazy must that have been, introducing these people to solid water for the first time. So I decided to look it up.
The Ice King from Boston
Frederic Tudor was an American Businessman, who was the first person to come up with the idea of shipping Ice to other countries. He founded the Tudor Ice Company and was known as Boston’s “Ice King”
His Idea was simple. He would cut chunks of ice from frozen ponds in New England, load them in a ship and take them for sale to Europe, the Caribbean, and even India!
Frederic’s first trip was to the Caribbean Island of Martinique. It was 2500 miles away and took him 20 days. Much of the 130-tonne ice that he had melted during the journey, and what was left melted in a few days on the shore as there was no place to store it. The people had to be educated about how to store the ice, which Frederic tried to do by distributing bills that read -
Today, March 7, and during three consecutive days, there will be put up for sale in small amounts a cargo of ice, brought into this port very well preserved, from Boston….This sale will take place immediately and will last three days only, the brig having to proceed at that time to another island. The price is ten cents a pound. It is necessary to bring a wool cloth or a piece of covering to wrap the ice; this means preserves it much longer.
Success in India
After more than 2 decades of failure, and on the verge of getting jailed because of his debts, Frederic finally had some success when he managed to ship ice to Calcutta. This was made possible by better insulation techniques and a twin blade ice cutter that enabled him to create large cubes of ice.
The ship left Boston on May 1833 with 180 tonnes of ice. After 4 months, when it finally reached Calcutta, it still had over 100 tonnes of ice left. The giant ice cubes bewildered the onlookers, one of them asked the captain — “Does Ice grow on trees in America?”
Ice from Boston became a much sort after luxury in India, and it remained so for decades to follow. The Tudor Ice Company flourished and Frederic soon became a millionaire.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here
Yesterday’s blog — The Apollo 1 Tragedy