Product Description

The story of the 19th-century ice trade, in which ice from the lakes of New England -- valued for its incredible purity -- revolutionised domestic life around the world. In the days before artificial refrigeration, it was thought impossible to transport ice for long distances. But one man, Frederic Tudor, was convinced it could be done. This is the story of how, almost single-handedly, and in the face of near-universal mockery, he established a vast industry that would introduce the benefits of fresh ice to large parts of the globe. Thanks to Tudor, the American fashion for drinks 'on the rocks' spread to tropical areas such as the West Indies and British India. By the 1830s fleets of schooners carried the frozen cargo, packed with sawdust and tarpaulins for insulation, to all corners of the world. The harvesting of the ice from New England's lakes employed thousands of men. The frozen water trade had a profound influence on the tastes of a large part of the world, but with the development of artificial cooling systems in the first quarter of the 20th century, the huge industry established by Frederic Tudor vanished as if it had never been.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233627 in Books
• Published on: 2003-03-17
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

About the Author
Gavin Weightman is an experienced television documentary-maker (producer/director/writer), journalist and author of many books such as The Making of Modern London: 1815--1914, The Making of Modern London: 1914--1939, London River, Picture Post Britain and Rescue: A History of the British Emergency Services (Boxtree).

Customer Reviews

Fascinating
An interesting and absorbing book detailing the early days of the Ice Industry in the US. Centered around Frederic Tudor and his constant ups and downs, this is one of those books that is difficult to put down. As an aside, it raises some interesting differences between US and UK "Ice Drink" culture in the Victorian times, throws in some interesting historical pointers into the development of artificial refrigration. Much more than a book on ice. Well worth reading.

A Truly Inspirational Book
Sadly I never have the time to read as many books as I would wish. Having heard The Frozen Water Trade featured on Radio 4, I thought it sounded facinating, and that is exactly what it proved to be. I hate the cliche "I could not put it down until I had read it from cover to cover" but The Frozen Water Trade is one such book and I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone who has an entreprenurial spirit. This book will be a huge motivational weapon. As someone who does not even have ice in my drinks I found the topic spellbinding and Gavin Weightman has written it with great authority and attention to detail. The book will be an inspiration for ANYONE trying their best in life to suceed with all the odds stacked against them. Reading it gave me a spring in my step. One of the most interesting books I have ever read.

Entrepreneurship and ingenuity create a new industry.
The indescribable heat of summer in Calcutta was especially oppressive for officials of the Empire, accustomed as they were to cooler weather at home, and when word reached them in September, 1833, that a ship carrying ice from Boston had arrived at the mouth of the Hooghly River, many regarded this as a huge practical joke. The temperature that September day was over 90 degrees, and any ice from New England would have had to be cut from rivers or ponds at least six months earlier. No such shipment of ice had ever been attempted before, and the journey from Boston to Calcutta would have taken 120 days, even if the weather had been good. How could ice possibly survive so long without refrigeration in the hold of a ship? Nevertheless, fifty tons of ice were soon unloaded and sold to the astonished British inhabitants.

For Frederic Tudor the successful shipping of this ice to Calcutta in 1833 was the culmination of a thirty-year dream. A "diminutive, pig-headed Bostonian," he had dropped out of school at thirteen and was regarded as a family maverick, always doing something different from what was expected. Boston financiers refused to help him finance his wild dream of shipping ice to the tropics, and it was Frederic's own family and connections which had to subsidize his initial experiments in 1806, when, at age twenty-two, he made his first shipment of "frozen water" to Martinique. By selling an easily available, free commodity--ice from New England's frozen rivers and ponds--to other parts of the world, however, Frederic Tudor eventually became one of the great American entrepreneurs of the nineteenth century, ultimately earning a long-term profit of almost a quarter of a million dollars in the Calcutta trade alone.

The Frozen Water Trade is a fascinating story of entrepreneurship, engineering, marketing, and ingenuity, and Weightman's contribution to our understanding of this little known ice industry is immense. With fascinating illustrations and many old photographs, he documents how Massachusetts ice, if heavily insulated with sawdust, could last in icehouses for several years, and, with similar insulation, could be shipped throughout the world for most of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. The author, a British journalist, has gathered information about the unique and almost-forgotten New England ice industry from archives all over the world, turning his research into a truly compelling narrative which is great fun to read. His ability to highlight details which keep the reader enthralled while learning something new makes his scholarly research accessible to even the most reluctant reader of history. Mary Whipple