![]() ![]() Although the ice arrived in Martinique in perfect condition, no one wanted to buy it. We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation." A vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique. In fact, no ship in Boston would agree to transport the unusual cargo, so Frederic spent nearly $5000 (a big chunk of the seed money) buying a ship of his own. During the next six months, the brothers pooled their money and laid out plans to ship their product to the French island of Martinique, where they hoped to create a monopoly on ice. Tudor reasoned that once people tried it, they'd never want to live without it. After all, he had little else to do.įrederic convinced William to join him in a scheme to ship ice from New England to the Caribbean. When his brother, William, quipped that they should harvest ice from the estate's pond and sell it in the West Indies, Frederic took the notion seriously. After loafing for a few years, he retired to his family's country estate to hunt, fish, and play at farming. He had the pedigree to attend Harvard but dropped out of school at the age of 13. Nothing in Tudor's early years indicated that he would invent an industry. His name was Frederic Tudor, and 30 years later, he would ship nearly 12,000 tons of ice halfway around the globe to become the "Ice King." ICE MAN COMETH It was a passing remark, but it stuck with one of the brothers. They joked about how their chilled refreshments would be the envy of all the colonists sweating in the West Indies. In 1805, two wealthy brothers from Boston were at a family picnic, enjoying the rare luxuries of cold beverages and ice cream. Frederic Tudor not only introduced the world to cold glasses of water on hot summer days, he created a thirst people never realized they had. ![]() ![]() But in the early 1800s, one man saw dollar signs in frozen ponds. Until two centuries ago, ice was just an unfortunate side effect of winter. ![]()
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