Tudor, Frederick

Appears in

Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

Published 2004

About

Shipping ice from a pond in Massachusetts to an island in the Caribbean sounded more like a joke than a business plan when Frederick Tudor (1783–1864) proposed the idea. He had no experience in ice harvesting or shipping, and investors were not forthcoming. Yet Tudor was undeterred. He bought a ship, the Favorite, had it loaded with 130 tons of ice, and sailed from Boston on 10 February 1806. He was twenty-three years old.

Tudor was accustomed to having ice to make ice cream and cool drinks as his family had an icehouse at their summer estate, but he was an unlikely candidate for business. He came from a prominent Boston family whose men went to Harvard, and he was expected to do the same. But he left school at thirteen, drifted about, and traveled to Cuba before deciding to harvest ice.

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