The Frozen Water Trade

This is a charming, lightweight and heartwarming story, worthy of Samuel Smiles' Self Help. Braving pirates, yellow fever, double-crossing business partners, debtor's prison and multiple failures one man founds an industry and achieves wealth, honour and a young pretty wife.In nineteenth century Boston Frederick Tudor had a brain wave. Why not ship New England's lake ice to hot countries and make a fortune? He wanted to patent his idea and get monopoly rights from his customers. He was worried about competitors stealing his idea. He needn't have worried, his scheme was universally derided.Through sheer stubbornness Tudor eventually succeeded, though the secret of success was not monopoly but a policy of pile it high and sell it cheap. An ice cube as big as a diamond melts quickly, an ice cube as big as the Ritz is almost forever. The largest market, it turned out, was not the tropics but the US itself.Today we use fridges and air conditioners to do the work that the ice trade used to do, and our closest approach to the ice trade is the ersatz nostalgia of the supermarket fish counter. Yet perhaps the trade is not dead yet. There are schemes afoot (as they have been for 150 years) to tow icebergs to hot countries to supply fresh water.The book could have been 30 pages shorter. Success is less interesting than failure, and there are large repetitive quotes from local newspapers in the latter part of the story which add nothing. But when he's writing not quoting the author writes well. Recommended holiday reading.

Took the book on holiday and read it quickly. Great of example of perseverance and tenacity and intetresting example of the different attitude to enterprise in the UK and USA. Frederick Tudor was actually in prison for unpaid debts for a while but made good eventually and one wonders if he would have "made it" in the UK if that had happened to him here. At times not the nicest chap who in his old age when he was rich and successful, did not remember some of closest friends who kept going in the early days. Married late in life but his wife who was 30 years younger than him, complained that he was too demanding! Would it work now with global warming and ice to Calcutta? a trade which lasted 25 years after commercial refrigeration was available?Interesting example of how quickly we forget.

A fascinating look at an everyday item to which I had never given much thought.The amazing ingenuity of transporting ice, the logistics involved and the incredible background context against which this is set, all make for a thoroughly interesting, albeit slightly obscure, historical read.If you are looking for something a little bit different, then this is the book for you.Read whilst enjoying a cold drink for that bit extra.

... shipping Ice..? from Boston...? A totally eye-opening book about the shipping of ice accross the empire and beyond. I was alerted to this by a guide at Petworth Park, West Sussex which has a three-section ice-house. One section especially for the 'clean ice' from the Mississipi, and not the ice with bits in from the local pond. The book is a very personal tale of one man's bright idea, and how it revolutionised cooking, dining and medicine. Read it!

This is a very good and interesting book that describes a relatively unknown area of American economy in the 19th century. On the whole, I believe it's worth reading even just for fun and the pleasure of discovering facts that one has not been aware of (as it's very well written). I just wish it contained more details about the trade itself. On the other hand, maybe no more were available. The book also lacks a bibliography, which is a serious drawback, if one wants to do some follow-up research on their own.