Above: ice saws and ice picks in use.

Hanging in my garage was an ice saw (like the ones pictured above) and an ice pick -- tools Charles used cut ice and to move the cut ice around in the water. Google "ice harvesting" (as I did) for more pictures like these. (Both these tools have been sold to a fellow in Indiana.)

The supply of harvested ice -- stored in the well-insulated ice house would last well into the summer. When that supply was depleted, he'd hook his team to his ice wagon and head for the wharves in Providence. There he'd buy ice brought on sailing ships from higher latitudes.

Think about Charles, my great-uncle Fred and my "Uncle Ice" (Howard Merchant) when you swing open your fridge door to get an ice cube, and know you have no ice box drain pan to empty.

See Fred and Charles and family.

Meet Frederic Tudor, the "Ice King"
by Fred Langa

I first wrote about this a couple years back, prompted by an article in the Boston Globe about a New England guy who really did change the world in a weird way. His name was Frederic Tudor, and he was the "Ice King."

In 1806, he figured out how to ship ice over long distances: He "cut ice out of a lake in Lynn and packed it below the ship's water line, using a mixture of sawdust and hay as insulation. An impressive amount of the ice survived the 20 day journey over the Atlantic Ocean [to Martinique.]"

Tudor had invented the ice trade, which would change food storage forever.

By the 1850s, roughly 140,000 tons of ice were leaving Massachusetts every year, headed for more than 50 cities around the world, reaching as far as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Calcutta.

The availability of ice, in times and places where it was not available naturally, had astonishing repercussions:

"The ice trade was a catalyst for a transformation in daily life so powerful that the mark it left can still be seen on our cultural habits even today.... Suddenly people could eat perishable fruits, vegetables, and meat produced far from their homes. Ice built a new kind of infrastructure that would ultimately become the cold, shiny basis for the entire modern food industry."

The ice trade even changed the US legal system. For example:

Ice-cutting machine design rivalries led to permanent changes in the Patent system. Disputes over who owned the rights to pond ice, when a pond has many abutters, changed how property rights were defined.

And Tudor also changed marketing: He gave free ice to prominent bars, for a year. Once the customers got accustomed to cold drinks any time of the year, the bartenders were more or less obliged to buy ice (at normal rates) from year two onward.

How successful was he? "To this day," the article says, "Europeans rarely put ice in their drinks, but Americans do."

Hi Jeanne,
I think ice floats with about 7/8 of its volume under water.

I'm sure my grandfather and his crew (a brother and son) fell in a few times. But the water was close to home -- the mill pond, which supplied power to the Geneva Mill (today housing "luxury lofts") abutted his property. It was a short walk to a warm kitchen.

A screen shot today of the two
houses Charles built -- close
to the mill pond.

I replied:
We did not have one at home, but my aunt (daughter of Charles) had one. It was wood, metal lined. Handsome brass hardware. Like this:

The rest is history. By the following March, Frederic Tudor was in the Caribbean with his first shipload of ice. Initially he lost money, in part because his ice tended to melt on the long sea journey. But once he settled on sawdust for insulation and made other improvements, Tudor began shipping ice as far away as India. Ultimately, Tudor made millions and earned the title of "The Ice King."