Frozen Water Trade, The

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, May/Jun 2004

The Frozen Water Trade By Gavin Weightman. 269 pp., illustrations, softcover, 2003. $13.95 nonEAIA members / $12.55 members.

Imagine taking a substance everyone considered of no value whatsoever and making a fortune from it. In 1806 Frederick Tudor shipped a cargo of ice cut from a Massachusetts pond to the West Indies, allowing the inhabitants to make ice cream, cool their drinks, and obtain relief from fevers. Beset by innumerable obstacles and scoffed at his friends and associates in Massachusetts, Tudor built a huge and successful industry that spread throughout the New England states and up the Hudson River. Along the way he developed the means to harvest, store, and transport the ice to its markets, there to be stored again until it was sold at retail. He developed everything from harvesting tools and insulation to the market itself in the southern states, the West Indies, and Calcutta, India. This is a fascinating story of that industry and how Tudor first pioneered and was later followed by many until mechanical refrigeration finally ended the demand for natural ice.