The advantages derived from their part of the expedition were not equal to the expense of it, which was near $2,000. They never entered into the undertaking with the ardour which was necessary to insure success in the outset of the business. They were easily discouraged and did not announce the thing with that confidence that defies ridicule and opposition, insures friends and leads in every project more than anything to success. I make no apology to myself for expressing here my private opinions as it is for myself alone I minute down here all the circumstances attending the undertaking which I projected. If I am so unfortunate as to have connected with me friends who have not aided me, let them if they ever read what I am now writing remember that I only blame them for not understanding ‘how to conduct a new and as the world says extravagant enterprise’.
Frederic calculated that the losses from this first venture in the ice trade amounted to between three and four thousand dollars, with total ice sales of about $2,000. However, he reasoned that he was not responsible for this setback, and that though the first shipment of ice had proved to be a costly failure he now knew how to make it pay. In fact he was already planning his next venture, this time to Havana.
From the Ice-House to the Jailhouse
Frederic Tudor had had a miserable time in Martinique: he had lost a great deal of money, and he regarded his brother and cousin as half-hearted business associates; yet he did not abandon his dream of making a fortune selling ice. Why he was so persistent is a mystery, for the prospect before him was not at all promising, and there were many other commodities he might have traded in. The Ice House Diaries he kept almost continuously from 1805 until 1838 do not really provide a satisfactory answer. What they do reveal is a blind commitment to a venture which many times threatened Frederic’s health and sanity, and often caused him acute embarrassment within the Boston community. He had bouts of self-pity, but rarely of self-doubt. What drove him on even when everything seemed hopeless was his pride: he had announced to the world at the age of twenty-two that he could make money out of a commodity other New Englanders regarded as worthless, and he was determined to prove that he was right and all those around him were wrong.
Frederic’s dismay at the apparent bafflement of the people of St Pierre when offered a chunk of ice did not undermine his belief that there was a ready market for it in hot climates. Once they became accustomed to regular deliveries, he felt, people would be hooked. The same would be true in Havana and possibly southern US cities such as Charleston and New Orleans. Nobody could doubt that this luxury would be sought after if there were guaranteed deliveries to cover the hottest months of the year. And a lesson Frederic had learned from the unsuccessful expedition to Martinique was that there must be a properly designed ice-house at the point of delivery, from which small quantities could be sold over weeks or even months.
In August 1806 Frederic’s brother William sailed from New York to London to pursue the grant of exclusive ice-trade rights with British-owned islands in the West Indies. The Judge, along with Frederic’s mother and younger sister Delia, followed him. They intended to enjoy the glamorous social round in England and France and, with luck, find a good match for Delia. However, it was already becoming clear that the family was in serious financial difficulty. The Judge’s South Boston speculation was not yet returning any kind of profit, and he had to sell some of his property and borrow money at a high interest rate to fund the trip to Europe.
Frederic had no money either, and was unable to find any financial backers for the ice venture. His brig the Favorite is not mentioned again in his diaries, and he must have sold it – almost certainly at a loss, for it had needed extensive repairs in Martinique. In future he would have to persuade ship-owners to carry his unconventional cargo. This would prove to be less of a problem, as the voyage to Martinique had demonstrated that it was feasible, and would not sink a vessel.
Throughout the summer and autumn Frederic spent his time making contacts in the West Indies, setting up agents on Jamaica, Barbados, Guadeloupe and St Thomas. He arranged for an ice-house to be built in St Pierre. He had a good contact in Havana, for his cousin William Savage, James’s brother, lived there. Though William failed to persuade the Spanish authorities to grant exclusive rights to sell ice in Cuba, he was able to get an ice-house of sorts built in Havana.
When the first hard frosts of the winter froze Rockwood Pond in January 1807 Frederic began his second season in the ice trade. The technology of harvesting and shipping ice was still very crude: he probably supplemented what he could get from Rockwood with supplies bought from local farmers. Though he had been working on designs for an ice-house at Rockwood, Frederic still had nowhere to hold large reserves which might last through the summer. His shipping would be done in winter and spring, when the temperature in Boston, though very variable, would preserve the ice until it was sent south. Though he would have to pay for the building of ice-houses and freight charges if the trade expanded, the ice itself was free: nobody owned the frozen water of the New England ponds, and he could get supplies wherever he wanted. One excellent source of good clear ice was Fresh Pond in Cambridge, and Frederic almost certainly paid a winter workforce to cut ice from there.
In January 1807 Frederic sent his second cargo of ice to the West Indies, but he did not sail with it. This time it went to Havana, to be stored and sold by his cousin William Savage. There were about 180 tons of ice on board the brig Trident when it left Boston. We do not know how much of this survived the voyage, but William was able to fill the Havana ice-house, and he found a ready market, chiefly among the cafe owners, who used it to make chilled drinks and ice cream. In March and April two more consignments of ice were sent, and though the ice lasted only about two weeks in Havana William was able to sell $6,000-worth. With William, Frederic arranged for the Trident to ship a cargo of molasses from Havana on the voyage back to Boston. This would have been profitable had the customer paid up, but his business failed and Frederic had to foot the bill. He could not afford to send another shipment of ice to Martinique, and his new ice-house there was abandoned.
Meanwhile William Tudor was involved in difficult negotiations with the British authorities in London. He had good contacts there, but nobody could quite believe that he really was asking for exclusive rights to sell ice to West Indian islands. They suspected that this was a cover, and a particularly bizarre one at that, for some Yankee smuggling operation. William had to come up with some special reason to persuade the authorities that the ice trade would be useful to the British in the West Indies. He found it in the claim that ice would be of great medical benefit in the treatment of fevers. A doctor’s letter arguing the case for ice-pack treatment secured the deal, and William was able to inform Frederic that he had the monopoly he wanted in Jamaica, Antigua and Barbados. But by this time he could not afford to pay for any ice shipments, and the hard-won exclusive privileges were worthless.
In the second year of the ice trade Frederic had made only three shipments to Havana, and the prospects there, though promising, were limited by the rapid melting of his cargo once it was landed. He decided to go to Havana himself and build a better ice-house in preparation for his third season. Though he did not know it when he first arrived in Cuba in mid-December 1807, his journey was a waste of time and money. The American President, Thomas Jefferson, had persuaded Congress to put a temporary stop on all shipments from American ports as a demonstration of the new nation’s neutrality in the European conflict. Frederic was left high and dry; he abandoned his half-built ice-house in Havana and sailed back to Boston, as he would be unable to make any shipments that winter.
He had not been back at Rockwood long when his father returned from Europe alone, leaving his wife, son and daughter behind. The family fortune was gone, and what hope there was of retrieving it was locked up in the South Boston venture, the outcome of which remained uncertain. The Judge needed to find work, and through friends obtained an official position in the office