Reviews for The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story

The average rating for The Frozen Water Trade: A True Story based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-04-25 00:00:00 Juerg Ingold November 2011 This is what Gavin Weightman wants you to believe: in 1805, Frederick Tudor and his brother William had a brilliant idea: ice. Specifically, selling it--in the summer, in the South, in New Orleans, in Cuba and the Caribbean, in Britain and British India and all sorts of places where, before artificial refrigeration, ice was rare or difficult to make. It was an absurd idea at the time, but Frederick tried it anyway--and, over the next several decades, he succeeded. Despite early hardships, poor planning, financial near-ruin, and occasional warm winters, the Tudor Ice Company came to dominate the "frozen-water trade," employing thousands of workers and exporting millions of tons annually from New England to all parts of the world, delivering ice in ships to places as far away as Calcutta, both regularly and to enormous profits. And despite competition, Frederick Tudor--at one time proclaimed "The Ice King"--ruled the business, and retired a successful and wealthy man. However, as important and popular as the ice business was in the 19th Century, it disappeared almost completely in the 20th as artificial refrigeration became cheap and available. Like its product, the industry simply melted away, and was forgotten. At least, that’s the “official” history of the frozen-water trade. But I don’t buy it. Are we to believe, as the author says, that one man created an entire thriving industry solely for fame and fortune? That he was just in it for the money? That sound you hear is me snorting with incredulity. Thing is, if Seth Grahame-Smith has taught us anything recently, it's that the secret history of the world is full of monsters: Abraham Lincoln hunted vampires, Queen Victoria fought demons, Henry VIII was a werewolf, Shakespeare was immortal, etc. But it can't just be the important people. Plenty of other figures in history, less well-known (or, in Frederick's case, forgotten), were probably just as important in the never-ending war between the people of Earth and the forces of evil. So what was Frederick Tudor's part in the story? We can only guess. One possibility: in 1805 or so, Frederick Tudor lost his mother or his sister or maybe a childhood sweetheart in a boating accident, or a flood, on Rockwood Pond near Boston. In a bout of sisyphean madness, he vowed to drain the pond and scatter its waters across the earth--until his brother (secretly a water elemental working for Thomas Jefferson), advised Frederick to harvest the water, in its frozen state, in defense of the United States, or something. The young Republic at the turn of the 19th Century was weak, and the bodies of the men killed in the Revolution decades before had finally ripened and were rising from their graves as zombies. Worse, former President John Adams, still bitter from losing the election in 1800, had used his dark magicks to call up fire elementals to sabotage Jefferson's administration. There were local zombie uprisings in the West Indies, demons and hellhounds in New Orleans, and India--well, India was just hot. But ice would end these plagues, and if the Tudors could provide the ice, shipping it out to the regions of the world beseiged by the forces of darkness, perhaps humanity could gain the upper hand, or something. Or so Frederick was led to believe. Little did he, or his brother, realize the dark truth: Jefferson wasn't just fighting the forces of hell. He was kdnapping them, storing them in ice, and hiding them away. He was building an army of his own. And John Adams was not his only target... Or something. Thing is, who are you going to believe: Gavin Weightman, with his extensive research on the subject, or me with an awesome alternate theory? I bet I could get a book deal out of it, too. Anyone have Seth Grahame-Smith’s number?

Review # 2 was written on 2013-09-21 00:00:00 Kevin Burda In this review, I use images and some descriptions from the ice trade entry in wikipedia The entry is interesting to read and there are nice images and even a video. One of the most memorable scenes in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie Series books is the scene where she describes how the ice was cut, hauled and stored during the winter. The ice was kept in special ice houses and used in the summer. I have always been fascinated by the methods, practices and systems that human beings used in order to improve their life and survive before modern technology made everything so easy and effortless. This book tells the story of the ice trade industry, with special focus on the life and achievements of the pioneer of the industry, the New England businessman Frederic Tudor. At its peak, at the end of the 19th century, the U.S. ice trade employed an estimated 90,000 people in an industry capitalized at $28 million ($660 million in 2010 terms),[a] using ice houses capable of storing up to 250,000 tons . In 1879 a report estimated that the industry harvested about 8 million tons annually (however this is an estimate, as there were few records on the subject at the time). The ice trade around New York City; from top: ice houses on the Hudson River; ice barges being towed to New York; barges being unloaded; ocean steamship being supplied; ice being weighed; small customers being sold ice; the "uptown trade" to wealthier customers; an ice cellar being filled; by F. Ray, Harper's Weekly, 30 August 1884 While The ice was globally shipped by sea and rail reaching England, India, South America, China and Australia, the main bulk of the ice was used in the United States both for industry and private consumption. The ice harvest, which lasted for a few weeks, usually between January and March, took place across that huge region of North America where the winters are hard enough to freeze lakes and rivers solid. Whether it was on the Hudson River, one of the New England ponds, the Kennebec River in Maine or in the mid-west, it presented the same extraordinary winter tableau, and in many places drew crowds of spectators. Harvesting ice at Wolf Lake, Indiana, in 1889, showing the conveyor belts used to lift the product into the ice house When the surface was marked out, horse-drawn ploughs with metal teeth cut far enough down into the first grooves to enable men with long-handled chisels to prise the blocks free. The giant ice cubes were then coaxed along channels of free water to a mechanism which hoisted them into the timber ice-house. Loading was from the top, the blocks sliding down a chute from which they were hauled into regular stacks, like huge building blocks. Sawdust was put between and around the blocks as insulation. Stacked like that awaiting shipment, the ice cubes were able to survive for several years, shrinking slowly through each summer and refreezing in winter. Ice being stacked inside a warehouse at Barrytown on the Hudson River In 1806, Fredrick Tudor , shipped ice to the Caribbean island of Martinique, hoping to sell it to wealthy members of the European elite there. In the following years he overcame many technical and financial issues and became known as the "Ice king of Boston". Tudor and the people related to his business managed to improve the harvesting with special tools and methods, the storage with special designed Ice (storage) houses and the methods of distributing the ice. This book is an excellent researched book on a fascinating subject. It exposed me to an industry that I was not aware of, and does not exist anymore. After reading it, I did some online reading and broadened my mind on the subject. Personally, I would prefer more emphasize on the technology and industry, and less emphasize on the specific people and their hardships.