Why did India import ice from the US for four decades? The frozen history of the 'ice king' who smashed the Indian markets

Ice has been one of the most easily available yet existentially important commodities in life, especially during summers. From a tall glass of lassi clinking with ice cubes to litres of ice-cold water added to an air cooler, ice is the fuel that keeps India running when temperatures soar to as high as 50°C at times.

While making ice today is as simple as turning on a freezer, for four decades, India actually imported its 'white gold' from America. These massive frozen slabs travelled halfway across the globe to British Indian ports, arriving not as a melting commodity, but as a premier luxury item.

Ice, Ice Bombay

A white round building around 16 feet high with a domed roof once stood tall on Apollo Road in erstwhile Bombay. Now known as K.R. Cama Oriental Institute, a part of Shahid Bhagat Singh Road in south Mumbai, it was the Bombay Ice House built in 1843 with a capacity to hold around 150 tonnes of ice. This was the time when ice was imported in the presidency towns of British India as a luxury item from New England in the US North East.

According to David Dickason's 1991 essay, 'The 19th century Indo-American Ice Trade' as early as 400 BC, Persian engineers had worked out a technique: ice brought down from the mountains was stored in large containers placed underground and naturally cooled.

Similarly, the Mughals ruling India at the time used Himalayan ice brought back on horsebacks since India was yet to see electricity, railways or any industrial revolution. However, the British found the method expensive as it required maintaining ice fields and was labour intensive. Local "Hooghly ice," created in shallow pits, was often gritty, slushy, and unpotable, creating a perfect gap in the market for a cleaner alternative.

Hail the ice king

In the 1830s, Boston merchant Frederic Tudor, later hailed as the "Ice King"—transformed the global trade landscape. Born in 1783 into a well-regarded Bostonian family, he shipped ice to southern US and Caribbean. After facing financial ruin in the coffee trade, Tudor took a massive gamble: shipping ice from the freshwater lakes of New England to the sweltering heat of Calcutta.

Tutor, along with Samuel Austin and William Rogers began trading in India in 1778 when Lord Cornwallis extended the opportunities to them. In 1833, squared out slabs of ice made the voyage across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans stored in double-walled storehouses insulated with saw dust or tan to reduce melting during the journey of four months.

"Sir, in a country where at some seasons of the year the heat is almost unsupportable, where at times the "common necessity of life, water, cannot be had but in a tepid state-Ice must be considered as out doing most other luxuries," wrote Tudor in his personal diary 'The Ice House Diary'.

On May 12, 1833, the ship Tuscany sailed from Boston to Calcutta carrying 180 tonnes of ice. When it docked at Calcutta on September 6, it still had 100 tonnes of ice which amazed the public as the giant cubes were unloaded.

The ice markets

The export of American ice to India soon became a legitimate trade. Massachusetts, located at high altitudes in the eastern shores of the Atlantic produced substantial ice in its freshwater lakes. Moreover, the ice from Wenham Lake, did not contain salt and air bubbles and thus melted slowly, as per scientists such as Michael Faraday. In Bombay, the firm of Jahangir Nuseervanji Wadia distributed the ice and Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy was the first to dispense ice creams at a dinner party.

Since the ice served the elite Anglian society, Tudor not only received millions but also favours. From Calcutta alone, he generated a profit of $220,000 over 20 years. Moreover, the ice was transported directly to warehouses without customs house formalities, ice unloading was permitted at night, ice ships had an assigned docking place, were made duty-free and ice houses were leased to Tudor at nominal rent. Between the years 1856 and 1882, 353,450 tonnes of ice had been shipped out all across South and East Asia and also Australia. Some of the ice was reserved for medical hospitals in the presidency towns, and in years of low supply, ice was rationed.

Tudor secured a monopoly on the trade in 'white gold', and New England apples, as well as Spanish grapes and American butter, transported along with the ice also soon became expensive, coveted items of trade.

The big melt

Death of Tudor in 1864, advent of modern-methods of ice making such as Dr John Gorrie's ice maker, reduction in quality of ice were some of the reasons the American trade slowly declined. Accompanied by set up of Bengal Ice Company in 1878 and creation of ice plants which amounted to as many as 66 in 1925, further put the nail in the British-American coffin.

The Calcutta Ice house was razed to the ground in 1882, the Bombay one served as a warehouse till it was demolished in 1920s. The one in Chennai alone stands today; it was remodelled with circular verandas and multiple windows to make a residence.

This trade, interestingly, finds little mention in literature of the times, but it remains a souvenir of just how cold the British left India in the wake of their own luxuries, even icing out it's own ice.