Sell Out and Become a Regular Man

I am reposting this May 2012 article about "The Ice King" after visiting with cousins last weekend and being treated to a bird's-eye view of Spy Pond in Arlington, one of Frederic Tudor's "ice factories." (Pictures below.) Tudor was booted from "Innovation on Tap" for length--my bad for writing 600 pages when no publisher wanted to see more than 280--but, author's foibles aside, he remains one of the most fascinating innovators of his time.

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Frederic Tudor was born in Boston on the day the peace treaty ending the American Revolution was signed in 1783. He rode the earliest wave of American entrepreneurial activity, becoming one of the country’s first millionaires.  

Tudor possessed all of the qualities we have come to treasure (for better or worse) in our entrepreneurs, being described as “defiant. . .sometimes reckless in spirit. . .imperious, vain, contemptuous of competitors, and implacable to enemies.  While energetic in competition, he preferred legalized monopoly.”

What really made Tudor successful, however, was his incredible, ungodly persistence. 

At a time when Americans joked that New England had just two crops, ice, and granite, Frederic Turner took the former and turned it into a multimillion-dollar industry, creating a precious luxury item in markets from New Orleans to Havana to Calcutta.  He saw a market that was simply invisible to his fellow merchants, and he built that market by teaching people how to carry, store, and use ice to preserve foods, cool drinks, and make ice cream.  

We know Tudor was an entrepreneur because his fellow Boston merchants--who were happy to speculate in everything from coffee to mahogany to umbrellas--thought he was just plain nuts.  When he invested $10,000 in 1806 and filled the good ship Favorite with huge blocks of ice hacked from Fresh Pond in Cambridge, the Boston Gazette wrote, “No joke.  A vessel with a cargo of 80 tons of Ice has cleared out from this port for Martinique.  We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.” 

Much to the delight of his skeptics, this first trip turned out to be a financial disaster.  While much of the ice miraculously made it to Martinique, Tudor lacked infrastructure (namely, an ice house) and consumer education (how to use something that had never before been seen), so the ice melted away in six weeks, and he lost $4000.  (The solution to insulation would prove to be sawdust, creating an important aftermarket for New England sawmills.)

Spy Pond, Arlington, 1852

Spy Pond, Arlington, May 2024 (from the bee-keeping meadow :)

Frustrated?  Of course.  Daunted?  Never.  For the next 15 years, Frederic Tudor shipped ice to ports from Charleston to Havana to New Orleans, building the trade, taking endless risks, suffering yellow fever, a mental breakdown, employee theft and government corruption, the Jefferson embargo, the War of 1812, the Panic of 1819, finding himself perpetually undercapitalized and, not once, but twice tasting the humiliation of debtors’ prison. 

Throughout his career--too much and too extraordinary to cover here--Tudor cajoled, implored, begged, and borrowed from every member of his family, and from his family’s impeccable network, including Revolutionary War heroes, Boston’s Brahmin community, and most of the East Coast merchant class.  (Frederic’s father had worked with John Adams, his brother with John Quincy Adams.)  Tudor took advantage of every tie offered him and every connection he could forge himself.

By 1833 Frederic Tudor had become the dominant player in the global ice trade, the nation's Ice King.  His crowning glory came that year when he sent the Tuscany with 180 tons of ice to Calcutta, crossing the equator twice and preserving its cargo for four months across 16,000 miles.  Indeed, the British in India knew what to do with ice, welcoming it with a celebration and immediately subscribing funds to construct a palatial ice house.

By 1849, Tudor had become wealthy. In many cities, ice was an essential part of life, and the ice box was a common feature. A bachelor for most of his working life, Tudor married and fathered six children after the age of fifty, living until age 80 in 1864. He was a wealthy man with a country estate in present-day Nahant. 

Occasionally, though, he must have thought back to Dec 1817, sitting in a cold, foul-smelling prison cell wondering how he might finagle funds for his release from friends and family.  It was then that Fredric Tudor wrote a brilliant discourse on the plight of the struggling entrepreneur, one that still resonates today:

Had you not better entirely abandon this ice business?  It is a subject which wears out body and mind while it prevents you from having the standing among your fellow men which you deserve.  It occupies all your attention and appears at best subject to great hazard.   

In the course of twelve years pursuit you have arrived at little certainty. . .You stand at best a well-intentioned schemer and projector when you might, with a more regular application to common mercantile business, become a more useful and respected member of society.  It is not too late, you are not yet 36 years old and you may yet get back into the old road. 

Sell out in the best way you can and become a regular man.    

Answer: The suggestions of doubt are too late. . .My reputation is now so far pledged that I must advance. . .I, therefore, throw away every discouraging thought and determine to push on with as much exertion as I can command and endeavor to deserve success.”

If you are a committed entrepreneur, you have just one plotline--one that involves grit, persistence, and obsession. Let's hope you will never choose to become a regular man or woman.

Sources

Nicholas, Tom and Sandra Nicholas. "The Ice King." 9-808-094. Boston: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 8 February 2011.  Paterson, Carl Seaburg and Stanley. The Ice King: Frederic Tudor and His Circle. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society and Mystic Seaport, 2003.  Pearson, Henry Greenleaf. "Frederic Tudor, Ice King." Proceedings from the Massachusetts Historical Society 65 (Oct 1932-May 1936): 169-215. Weightman, Gavin. The Frozen-Water Trade. New York: Hyperion, 2003.