Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 (33 page)

Ice can be made locally anywhere there's an adequate supply of drinking water and temperatures fall below freezing at night during the winter, as evidenced by Persian practice.

In the mid-nineteenth century, around Berwick-on-Tweed, a British center of salmon fishing, "local farmers . . . flooded fields for the purpose [of making ice] and . . . sold it for 5
–
10 shillings per tonne; for some years it was their most profitable crop." (Cushing 108).

The natural ice industry had its unpredictable aspects: "ice famines" could occur if the producing regions suffered an unusually warm or short winter. New York, normally a producer state, had to import ice from Maine and Massachusetts in 1870 (Hall 21), and in 1880 it even obtained 18,000 tons ice from Norway. (Hall 3, 27). In 1898 the Norwegian and German ice crops failed, and Britain imported ice from Finland. (Blain 11).

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New England (initially just Massachusetts, later Maine was also exploited) ice was exported all over the world, including Martinique (1805), Havana (1807), Charleston (1817), Savannah (1818), New Orleans (1820), Calcutta (1833), Rio de Janeiro (1834), London (1842), Marseilles, Madras, Bombay, Canton, Manila, Hong Kong, Batavia, Sydney and Yokohama. (Hall 2
–
3; etc.). In the 1880s, the Massachusetts ice companies could expect to harvest about 669,000 tons in a good year (Hall 23), and in 1880 the Kennebec region of Maine shipped out 890,000 tons. In the new time line, the French are taking over the British colony in Massachusetts, and conceivably could exploit New England ice. However, even early-nineteenth century New England had much more of an infrastructure (sawmills, ships, laborers) to support a long-distance ice trade than is the case in 163x.

The Hudson river region of New York, in 1880, had the capacity to store 2,800,000 tons.

In the 1632 universe, the French are expected to take over, forcefully, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, and that of course will give them control of the Hudson River.

In 1880, ice was harvested in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, and even Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri, but these areas weren't colonized by the Europeans as of 1635 in the new time line and hence they aren't useful as a source of ice yet.

Entrepreneurs still in the Old World will want to find European sources, if possible, and these are discussed below.

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Scotland was of importance as a source of ice for local fishermen, but while fish frozen with Scottish ice ended up on British tables, it doesn't appear that Scotland had a larger role in the ice trade.

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Jan Baptist Van Helmont (1579
–
1644) reported that whalers in Greenland water strengthened wine by freezing out the water. (David 326). It's not clear when the ice was first harvested for sale, but it's known that in the late-eighteenth century, ice was brought from Greenland to Hamburg, and Greenlandic ice was brought to England as early as 1815. (Id.) In 1832, a 500 ton load was valued at 950 pounds for duty purposes. The same year, a ship brought in 150 tons from Iceland and the Faeroes, but it was valued at only 200 pounds. (335).

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Norway proved to be a much more important competitor for New England. The Norwegian trade began, unsuccessfully, in 1822; Leftwich's ship arrived in London with all its ice melted. "By the turn of the century, Norway exported more than 1,000,000 tons of ice each year, which vessels going to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, Constantinople, Africa and even as far away as India." Less than half of this went to England (Weightman 189); still, Norway held 99% of the English market.

Initially, the Norwegians harvested ice from the fjords, rivers and glaciers of its rugged west coast. However, "in many places the ice had to be carried on people's backs." Later, they switched to the lakes of the more heavily populated south and southeast coasts. The terrain was gentler and "ice-mining was an ideal part-time occupation for both the local farmers and the shipping crews. . .

." In addition, the local sawmills generated plenty of sawdust, an insulator. (Blain 7-8). It proved more convenient to create artificial lakes close to the fjords, on high points so ice could be slid down wooden inclines to the harbors, rather than rely on natural lakes further inland (9).

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Sweden, Russia and Finland played only a minor role in the ice trade with England, because ice in the Baltic tended to keep their ports closed for a couple of months after Norway's North Sea ports had opened. (Blain 12).

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In the nineteenth century, Russian Alaska exported ice to California. In 1852, "250 tons of Novo-Arkhangel'sk ice were sold to the California Ice Company at $75 per ton and shipped to San Francisco." (Black 264). Sitka proved to be an unreliable source, so in 1855 the Alaska Ice Company began harvesting ice from WoodyIsland. In 1852
–
9, over 7,000 tons were shipped from Alaska to points south (not just California, but also Latin America). As volumes grew, the price fell to $7 a ton. (Carlson 58).

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In the nineteenth century, after Norway, the largest producer of ice in Europe was Austria-Hungary, in particular the Vienna Ice Company. However, it serviced the German market, not Britain, and all I know is that in 1883
–
1885, it paid 20% dividends to its shareholders, but that it was liquidated in 1913.

Harvesting Ice

Timing is all. In the states at the southern border of the American "ice belt," such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio and New York, late in the season, ice might be cut as soon as it was six inches thick. Further north, the companies could safely wait most years for the ice to be ten to fifteen inches thick, and in Maine the preference was for it to be 20
–
30 inches. You didn't want the ice to be much thicker than that as it made it harder to handle economically. (Hall 8).

In Massachusetts, ice was harvested from January through March, when the ice had frozen to a depth of eighteen inches or more (Weightman 4). It was obtained from various Massachusetts lakes, including Fresh Pond, Walden Pond, Spy Pond and WenhamLake. Fresh Pond alone could produce 90,000 tons annually. (Weightman 193). The ice companies bought the shoreline to establish ownership of the ice, but there were occasional boundary disputes.

In the nineteenth-century New England ice trade, at first ice was harvested by hand, using pickaxes and chisels to break it into large blocks, which were then cut further on shore using two-man saws. Or you could cut a hole in the ice with an axe, and then saw out a block.

The big breakthrough was made in 1825 by Nathaniel Wyeth; the horse-drawn ice plow. The horses wore spiked horseshoes, for better traction, and the ice plow was eventually refined so that as it cut its line, it also scratched out a parallel line at the right separation to mark the next line. When one set of lines was complete, a second set was drawn at right angles to the first. The ice was thus gridded with horse-drawn iron cutters, and the grooves were deepened until the blocks could be pried out with chisels, and transported to timber ice houses on the lakeshore. The size of the blocks was based on the intended destination of the ice; the further it had to travel, the larger the block. When the spring thaw arrived, wagons took the ice down to the docks, and off it went. (Weightman 5
–
6, 106ff). The only disadvantage of the horse-drawn ice plow was that "the ice had to be thick enough to support the weight of the horses and the men driving them."

As the ice industry matured, specialized tools were developed to suit its particular needs; "eventually there were about 60 different tools used in the ice harvest for preparing the ice surface, cutting the blocks, poling blocks to the shore, breaking blocks, and getting the ice into storage." (Howell Farm) That doesn't mean we can't make do with standard tools like axes and saws to get the industry going. But according to Hall (4), the tools, supplemented by steam power for lifting the ice into the ice house, increased the speed of cutting and storing by a factor of ten.

My information about labor requirements is somewhat indirect. For example, I know that in 1880, the ice houses of the Hudson River region had a capacity of 2,800,000 tons. With good ice, the houses are filled as a result of the efforts of 20,000 men and 1,000 horses, in ten to twenty days from when cutting began. (Hall 26). That implies that 7
–
14 tons can be cut and stored per worker-day, given an experienced crew with then-modern equipment. The wages paid was $1
–
1.50/day, and the cost of cutting and storing was 25
–
50 cents/ton. (27). Cooper (1905) says that if the winter was favorable and the haul isn't more than a mile, harvesting cost 25 cents/ton. If the house was right at the shore line, half that; if the winter marginal, multiply by 2
–
4 fold. (464).

In 1844, at WenhamLake in Massachusetts, the crop of 200,000 tons could be cut and stored in three weeks. "Forty men and twelve horses will cut and stow away 400 tons a day; in favorable weather 100 men are sometimes employed at once." (Macgregor 988). That's 10 tons/worker-day. Consistently, Thoreau in
Walden Pond
said that in winter 1846
–
7, 100 men could harvest 1000 tons in a good day.

Bear in mind that this productivity data was for the mature ice trade. Figure that novices with general purpose hand tools will be less effective. Ballard (173) comments, "In our early history [1826?], seventy-five tons was considered a good day's work. During the past summer [1890?], several of the crews have handled in ten hours, one thousand tons."

I am not sure how much of this harvesting technology will be known in Grantville. There is no reference to it in the 1911
Encyclopedia Britannica
, probably it has a strong British bias and the British mostly imported ice. However, I have seen very detailed descriptions of the process in certain old encyclopedias, such as the
New American Encyclopaedia
(1872), the
New International Encyclopedia
(1918)("Ice industry"), and the
Encyclopedia Americana
(1919)("Ice Industry"). Some of the really old people in Grantville may have seen ice harvesting in their youth. But bear in mind that it became very uncommon after 1930.

Also, West Virginia is on the southern margin of the ice belt. For example, in the 1870s, the KanawhaRiver had more than six inches ice in only one of seven winters (Annual Reports, War Department). Lakes and ponds are more likely to freeze up, of course.

The best chance that someone from Grantville will have seen industrial-scale ice harvesting is on a visit to a living history farm that either still does it or has photos showing what it's like. One such location is the Howell Living History Farm in Lambertville, New Jersey. There's also the Longstreet farm in Holmdel, New Jersey, and the Wessels farm in York, Nebraska.

Thoreau's
Walden Pond
is more tantalizing than helpful. In the chapter "The Pond in Winter," he describes the activities of a crew of a hundred men armed with "sleds, plows, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and double-pointed pike-staff[s]. . . ." They divided the ice "into cakes by methods
too well known to require description
and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds."

When looking for possible sources, be resourceful. A farm-scale ice harvest is described in Laura Ingalls Wilder's
Farmer Boy
(64ff).

You have the choice of harvesting slowly with a small work force or quickly with a large one, at least if you're in an area with a long winter.

If the ice is being stored for later distribution, then it should be packed loosely (perhaps 40
–
45 pounds/cubic foot), so that the blocks can be removed as needed. But if the ice is placed directly in the overhead ice room of a cold storage house, then it's packed as closely as possible (perhaps 45
–
50 pounds/cubic foot), and the blocks caulked together with chips, so it forms a solid mass. (Cooper 483, 490).

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Since Saint Petersburg wasn't built until 1702, it obviously wasn't getting ice from the Neva in our time period. Still, it's interesting to read Georg Kohl's description of how ice was harvested there in the 1830s, since the Russian and American methods were certainly independently developed. The crew cut an inclined plane into the ice, so floating blocks could be hauled up to the rim of the quarry. As in New England, the ice was grooved, first to layout a rectangle, and then a grid was laid over the rectangle. However, the grooves were made by hand, with an axe. A trench was dug to detach the rectangle. With this completed, workers would line up along a groove and strike it with heavy iron crowbar simultaneously. After a few knocks, the stripe would detach and they'd move on to the next one. A single laborer could cut a single stripe along the cross-grooves into individual blocks. (David 296).