So what should we make of this rather unusual saw? The teeth are very large, and angled, but not at all sharp, so it doesn’t look like it’s suitable for cutting wood. The implement is undoubtedly an ice saw, since ice was harvested on the Charles and probably elsewhere in Dover, until the invention of artificial refrigeration put an end to the business for all practical purposes.

Ice was a luxury for most of human history. The Chinese and Romans imported it from mountains and the Egyptians and Indians knew how to produce it in pots when the nights were cold. However, there was no easy way to produce it unless you lived where the water freezes. The Northern Europeans were able to harvest ice from lakes and rivers and preserve it for months by keeping it dry and insulated.

One of the earliest ice houses in the area was near the Narrows on the Charles River on Smith Street, torn down before 1860 (Dover Farms, Frank Smith). Any body of water that freezes solidly enough to support the weight of a team of men and possibly horses (a thickness of about one foot) would be suitable for the harvest. It was very dangerous work. It’s hard to imagine the Charles freezing solidly enough to support that kind of weight for long – but who knows? A flowing river would have been even more treacherous. Various sources state that a team of 75 men might be able to harvest 1500 tons of ice a day. At 12.5 pounds per cubic foot, that’s 240 thousand big ice cubes, filling a 500 foot square. Dover’s production was no doubt on a much smaller scale.

Thoreau mentions the ice harvest on Walden Pond which was exported to the Caribbean and India by Boston’s own “Ice King”, Frederic Tudor, who started shipping ice to Martinique in 1806. He later expanded his business throughout the Southern States (bringing his own supply to introduce skeptical Southerners to the joys of a cold beverage in hot weather) and amassing a sizeable fortune in the process.

River and lake ice is still harvested on a small scale, mostly for ice sculptures. Ice and coal were often supplied by the same company (coal for the cold weather, ice for the warm) but the coal is now generally fuel oil and charcoal. Our iceboxes are found in museums and antique stores and Honeymooners episodes, replaced by convenient freezers and refrigerators, and the iceman cometh no longer.

Richard White