Читать книгу: «The Frozen Water Trade (Text Only)», страница 3

CHAPTER TWO

Tropical Ice Creams

Frederic Tudor was always meticulous in keeping financial accounts. He recorded in his diary that he paid $1.50 to the boatman who rowed William and James out to the brig Jane which would take them to Martinique. It was already 2 November 1805, and it would take them at least a month to reach Martinique. They would need time to deliver their letters of introduction and arrange meetings. Frederic had set his two envoys a whole range of tasks, and was anxious that they took the enterprise seriously and did not consider this an excuse for a holiday. They were to arrange for gifts of ice to be offered to prominent French officials, to find an agent to handle sales, and to check out likely sites for an ice-house in St Pierre. Most important of all, they should negotiate the privilege of a monopoly in supplying the island. As soon as they had news they were to send Frederic a letter. This would take at least a month to arrive, by which time the Boston winter should have set in, ensuring that he had a supply of ice.

Once he had bade William and James farewell, Frederic set to work to prepare for the collection and shipping of the ice. It was a lonely and difficult time for him. Many people had now discovered what he was up to, and were making fun of him. He wrote defiantly in his diary, ‘Let those who win laugh.’ His father urged him to cut his losses and stay in Boston: ‘Every person is in wondering mood at our going to the West Indies and the Judge is continually told what a pity it is and how dangerous too and what a miserable prospect there is of success and I have a lecture every morning urging me to abandon the voyage which he says without knowing our plan is wild and ruinous.’

Had Frederic known what William and James were experiencing, he might have taken more notice of this advice; it was not all plain sailing on board the Jane, and there were hazards enough at the end of the voyage. James kept some notes of their adventures, which he later wrote up in the form of a diary. It is perhaps significant that there is not a single mention in his account of what anybody thought about their ice enterprise – did he himself take it seriously? Frederic certainly doubted the commitment of both his cousin and his brother.

By Wednesday, 27 November the Jane had come through some rough weather, but was expected to reach St Pierre by Sunday the following week. On the Saturday James noted: ‘We have spread all sail with a fine fresh breeze and strained our eyes “to see what was not to be seen”.’ As they scanned the horizon for a glimpse of land they saw instead another ship bearing down on them from the north-east. ‘We feared she was a Spanish privateer and dreaded being plundered and ill-treated; or she might be English and order us to another island, altho’ our papers are fair.’ Though the great age of piracy in these seas had ended a century earlier, there were still privateers waylaying ships with a view to stealing what they could. At first James’s fears appeared to be justified, for the ship fired across their bows as a signal to ‘hove to’. They were asked where they had sailed from and where they were going. The captain of the Jane was ordered aboard the ship, which according to James was ‘a handsome schooner with men of all colors on board’. To everyone’s great relief the captain returned within a quarter of an hour to report that it was a French privateer just out from Martinique, and that he had been well treated – in fact he had been offered fruit and liqueurs.

They were sent on their way, and shortly afterwards had sight of land. The next day, as they headed for the port of St Pierre, they were stopped again. This time it was an English ship, the Nimrod, which put another shot across their bows. Again they were treated with civility and allowed to sail on. When they were close enough to the island to make out cultivated fields along the shore, a third vessel, this time a ‘small topsail schooner’, came alongside and sent a boat to ask who they were and where they were going. The schooner then slid away towards the coast. Evening was drawing in and they could see firing in the distance, but had no idea who was involved in the skirmish.

As they were cruising into the harbour a shore battery fired two shots which landed close to them. Then, James wrote, ‘We hung a lantern in the main shrouds and were safe.’ The Jane weighed anchor the following morning, 4 December. William and James found lodgings and took a look around St Pierre, which impressed them. ‘Through every street runs a stream of water, which conveys all the filth from the houses to the sea, and at the same time produced a constant agitation of the air,’ James noted with admiration. The town already had a form of air-conditioning, it seems. But would it ever get a supply of ice cream?

Before William and James had arrived in St Pierre, Frederic had already sent them a letter with the news that he had his eye on an ideal vessel for transporting the ice, a brig called the Favorite. He had looked it over just after they set sail. On 27 November he noted in his diary that he had bought it for $4,750, a considerable sum of money and the best part of his entire capital, which he had raised by mortgaging some of the land he had bought in the South Boston scheme. For a merchant to purchase a ship to carry a single cargo was very unusual: the normal practice was to buy space on a ship and pay a freight charge to its owner. The newspapers had columns of advertisements inviting merchants to buy space on ships destined for particular ports.

Although there is no mention of it in his diary, the reason Frederic went to the expense of becoming a ship-owner was that nobody wanted to carry his ice. What kind of cargo was it that would start to melt as soon as it was loaded? Most ships, whether they were going to China or India or plying the coastal trade, carried a mix of cargoes, and a hold full of melt-water and slush could ruin the whole lot. The ice was heavy, and would therefore weigh down the ship and act initially as ballast; but as it drained away into the sea the ship would become lighter and less easy to handle. Whether or not Frederic was able to get any quotes for freighting ice we do not know, but it is unlikely. There was, anyway, another reason for buying a brig: as the owner, Frederic could fit it out as he wished, and he knew that to carry ice its hold would have to be lined with boards to provide a crude form of insulation. Buying a ship in Boston at that time was as easy as slapping down a few thousand dollars for a second-hand truck would be today, but the Favorite was Frederic’s single largest investment in this first venture, and the cost of it would absorb any profit he managed to make.

There was nothing much else Frederic could do but wait for news from William and James and for the winter to set in. A contact in Philadelphia sent him a copy of a pamphlet called ‘An essay on the Most Eligible Construction of Ice Houses and a Description of the Newly Invented Refrigerator’, written by a Maryland farmer and engineer called Thomas Moore. It had been published two years earlier, in 1803, and was an indication that Americans other than Frederic Tudor were thinking about how to make better and more profitable use of natural ice. Moore’s essay was written for farmers, who still brought their butter to market at night during the summer months, and often had to sell it at a reduced price the following morning when it had melted. Moore urged them to build more efficient ice-houses, and to make themselves refrigerators which would keep their butter hard on even the hottest day. His own patented design was a wooden box with a tin lining and layers of insulation, including rabbit fur, which would preserve ice for a whole day. There had been earlier models of refrigerators, but Moore thought his the most efficient. Frederic does not appear to have been as impressed by Moore’s essay as he might have been. He was evolving his own ideas about how best to build ice-houses, but had not thought much about how his customers on Martinique might preserve the ice they bought from him – an oversight which was to cause him considerable anxiety.

After two days in lodgings in St Pierre, William and James were taken in by the Moneau family, fugitives from the French Revolution, who had fled to South Carolina then moved to Martinique. The two cultured young men from Boston who spoke tolerable French were a social success, and within a week were granted two interviews with the Prefect, who they believed could arrange for exclusive rights to sell ice on the island. They sent a letter to Frederic telling of their safe arrival and warm welcome. However, both suffered bouts of fever, and only James was well enough to present their case when they were called for interview. By Christmas Eve it appeared that they had succeeded: their petition had been granted in the name of the Emperor Napoleon, and they could collect the signed papers the next day. But what appeared to be a fine Christmas present turned out to have a price on it: about $400. They were also asked to give an account of how ice sales in Martinique would proceed, a subject on which they were even vaguer than Frederic. With the whole venture in jeopardy, they decided to soften up the Prefect with a bribe. As they could not find the official himself they left a letter and two gold coins known as ‘Joes’, a Portuguese currency, and worth considerably less than $400, at the home of his secretary. The following day they had their monopoly with no conditions and no fees asked. They wrote immediately to Frederic with the good news in a letter dated 26 December.

Frederic received William and James’s first letter, telling of their arrival, on 10 January 1806. Quite unaware of the difficulties they had had, he noted in his diary the ‘highly pleasing’ news that they had been ‘received into the first company of the Island and met with the most flattering salutations’. On the same day he wrote: ‘It has now begun to freeze for the first time this winter. The Brig is all ready and the sky looks bright for the success of the scheme!’

By that time James was bedridden, struck down by yellow fever. This disease was a scourge of the American South and the Caribbean Islands. It was called ‘yellow’ fever because the most severely affected victims developed jaundice when the virus attacked their liver and kidneys. Those who suffered the most severe toxic phase of the disease had only a fifty-fifty chance of survival, and died within ten to fourteen days suffering horribly from bleeding gums and kidney failure. Most sufferers, however, after a few days of nausea, vomiting and severe aches and pains, recovered fully after a period of convalescence.

James was cared for in the town of Trois Islets by an old friend who had settled in Martinique. Meanwhile, William continued the tour of the West Indies alone. He took a ship to the island of Guadeloupe, then on to Antigua, all the while sounding out the market for Boston ice. He had no idea how Frederic was getting on, and it appears to have been no part of the plan to greet him on his arrival on Martinique.

On 20 January Frederic received William and James’s second letter, with the good news that exclusive rights had been granted and that there was an agent awaiting the arrival of the ice. But the sky was no longer bright for the success of the scheme. Frederic wrote in his diary:

Everything except the weather favors the enterprise. This is indeed most remarkably bad – nothing but storm, frost and snow, it is certainly a difficult thing to see the moment for getting the ice and putting it on board there has not been one opportunity yet. Either the harbor has been frozen up or when open there was no ice. Storms have twice already prevented cutting the ice and when the storm ceases the pond is covered with snow.

The possibility that the weather might not be favourable had not been anticipated, even though Boston’s winter climate was notoriously variable, with huge leaps and falls in temperature. Frederic had nowhere to store ice when it was eventually cut, and was hoping that it could go straight to the ship and on to Martinique without delay. But ships were sometimes ice-bound in Boston harbour in winter, and it had not occurred to Frederic that weather which produced good ice on Rockwood Pond might also prevent the Favorite from sailing. All in all the technicalities of cutting and shipping ice were proving to be much more problematic than he had foreseen. It would be interesting to know where and how Frederic planned to harvest upwards of a hundred tons of ice, but he does not say. As he refers to ‘the pond’, perhaps he meant Rockwood Pond on the family estate. But he might also have contracted with local farmers to get additional supplies, as he certainly did later on. We do not know who cut his ice, but presumably it was hacked and sawn out, delivered to his ship in irregular blocks by horse-drawn wagon, then thrown or lowered into the specially prepared hold and sealed over with some hay as insulation.

It was already the end of the first week in February 1806 when Frederic felt confident enough to provision his ship, paying $5.75 for rum, brandy and other essentials. Captain Thomas Pearson was engaged for $50 a month. The ice was cut and the ship loaded and ready to sail by 10 February. They were bade farewell by the Boston Gazette, which expressed the whole mercantile community’s derision in three sentences:

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.

Bad weather kept the Favorite in harbour until 13 February, but then she made good passage and arrived in St Pierre on 5 March, a voyage of only twenty-one days. According to Frederic, when she left Boston she had on board not eighty but 130 tons of ice, though exact measurement was hardly relevant: what was important was how much was left when he got to Martinique. This he did not record, stating only that the ice which did survive the trip was in ‘perfect condition’ – an odd description, as ice in any other state would presumably have disappeared. He certainly had a considerable quantity left, but found he had nowhere in St Pierre to store it. He put the blame for this on William and James, who had left a letter for him suggesting sites for an ice-house, although none was ready. They also gave the names of nine prominent people who expected complimentary blocks of ice – ‘as much as a negro could carry’ – and the Captain-General should be sent a hundred pounds of it. An agent called William Dawson had a copy of the privilege which had been granted, but William and James advised Frederic not to bother staying on Martinique, as there did not seem to be much demand for ice there.

All he could do was seek permission to sell his ice directly from the Favorite, though this meant that it would melt rapidly when the hold was open. He sold $50-worth in two days, charging sixteen cents a pound. He was offered $4,000 for the whole cargo, but decided to turn this down. To draw in more customers he had printed some handbills which were distributed in St Pierre. He kept a copy and later pasted it in his Ice House Diary. Headed ‘Glace’, it announced in French that from that day, 7 March, and for the following three days small quantities of ice would be sold aboard ship from a well preserved consignment brought from Boston on the brig Favorite, and that after three days the brig would move on to another island. The price was thirty French sous per pound. Buyers were advised to bring a woollen cloth or some other material to wrap around the ice they bought in order to preserve it.

There were no refrigerators in St Pierre, and according to Frederic most islanders had no idea what to do with the ice once they had bought it. This inhibited sales, and business was sluggish. Frederic was in a state of great anxiety, and ready to blame everyone but himself for the predicament he was in. He wrote to his brother-in-law Robert Gardiner:

It is difficult to conceive how determined to believe most of the people here are that ice will melt in spite of all precautions; and their methods of keeping it are laughable, to be sure. One carries it through the street to his house in the sun noonday, puts it in a plate before his door, and then complains that ‘il fond’. Another puts it in a tub of water, a third by way of climax puts his in salt! And all this notwithstanding they were directed in the handbill what to do.

Frederic does not say what he expected the islanders to do with a few small lumps of ice which would melt rapidly whether or not they were wrapped in a blanket en route from the Favorite to their homes. His best trade, it seems, was making ice creams, and in his letter to Robert Gardiner he told of one small triumph:

The man who keeps the Tivoli Garden insisted ice creams could not be made in this country and that the ice itself would all thaw before he could get it home! I told him I had made them here … and putting my fist pretty hard upon the table I called … for an order of 6olbs of ice and in a pretty warm tone directed the man to have his cream ready and that I would come to freeze it for him in the morning, which I did accordingly, being determined to spare no pains to convince these people that they cannot only have ice but all the luxuries arising here as elsewhere. The Tivoli man rec’d for these creams the first night $300; after this he was humble as a mushroom.

Frederic’s account of his first attempt to sell ice in the West Indies is not entirely convincing. It is very unlikely that when the Favorite docked in St Pierre his ice was, as he claimed, ‘in perfect condition’. A considerable portion of the cargo would have melted on the voyage, as at that time he did not know how to insulate it really effectively. He must have realised as soon as the Favorite weighed anchor that he was not going to sell $10,000 worth of ice as he had hoped, and from the very beginning he was cutting his losses. He should have accepted the offer of $4,000 for the entire shipment and found a cargo for the return voyage, for which he could at least charge freight. Instead he hung on, selling about twenty to thirty dollars-worth of ice a day. He had no idea where William and James were, and had nowhere to sail on to.

Towards the end of March, with the ice melting faster than he could sell it, Frederic accepted a proposition that he take a cargo of sugar back to Boston, and that the remaining ice be unloaded and sold on commission. In the meantime he sailed the 120 miles south-east to Barbados, hoping to get the same kind of exclusive privilege he had on Martinique. He was unsuccessful, and by the time he returned to St Pierre all his ice had gone and the Favorite was loaded with sugar and ready to sail. Two hours out from port the brig hit a squall and lost her masts, which had only recently been repaired. The disconsolate Frederic had to return to St Pierre, where he was given a compensatory box of oranges by the man who had sold the last of his ice on commission. It was not until late April that he finally headed back to Boston, with a paragraph from a St Pierre newspaper as a keepsake:

It will be a remarkable epoch in the history of luxury and enterprise that on the 6th March ice creams have been eaten in Martinique probably for the first time since the settlement of the country. And this too in a volcanic land lying 14 degrees north of the equator.

When he got home Frederic pasted this proudly into his Ice House Diary.

William and James were still on their tour of the West Indies when the Favorite left St Pierre. James’s yellow fever had laid him low for seven weeks, and he did not meet up with William again until the end of February, on the island of St Croix, near Puerto Rico. From there they sailed to Jamaica, where the English governor, Sir Eyre Coote, heard their case for exclusive rights to supply the island with ice. Sir Eyre was courteous, according to William, ‘though he thought it a cursed strange thing’. Throughout the British Empire, however, only the Privy Council in London could grant exclusive trade deals.

The ice envoys did not set sail for Boston until 4 May, when they boarded the Huntress, which was loaded with seventy hogsheads of high-proof rum. They were once again waylaid by privateers, including a Spanish ship which gave them the most unpleasant reception of the whole voyage. An officer came aboard rattling a cutlass and ordered everyone to disembark and to go on board the privateer. When some of them, including James, were slow to obey the officer waved the cutlass above their heads, and gave James a tap on the shoulder with the blunt edge. They later discovered that while on the privateer they had been robbed of a few valuables, including William’s set of pistols and two gold watches. After that the Huntress made slow progress, as the captain had trouble establishing his position. On 15 May, when they discovered they were further away from Boston than they had been the day before, James scribbled a note: ‘Ah! what a glorious fellow will he be who can discover a mode of finding Longitude, easy, certain and expeditious, as that of ascertaining Latitude.’ A clock which kept good time at sea and was unaffected by changes in weather and atmosphere was what was needed. Chronometers had been made by the Englishman John Harrison more than thirty years earlier, but do not appear to have been in use in New England in the early 1800s.

After a few days in quarantine in Boston harbour – to guard against the importation of yellow fever and smallpox – William and James set foot again on New England soil on 3 June. They had been away for six months. Frederic was not at all pleased with their efforts, and showed no sympathy for the illness James had suffered. Instead he wrote in his diary:

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.