Not such a far-fetched idea.
In 1851, Dr Gorrie , a doctor in Northwest Florida, was hosting a dinner party that included the French Ambassador and was deluded with questions when he explained that he had made the ice that was in their drinks.
Everyone was truly baffled because the arrival of the 'ice ships' in Southern ports in the heat of summer was a big event...everyone knew when the 'ice ship' came. The 'ice ship' hadn't been in port at all.
Doctor Gorrie had invented refrigeration.
"Dr. Gorrie became convinced that cold was the healer. He noted that "Nature would terminate the fevers by changing the seasons." Ice, cut in the winter in northern lakes, stored in underground ice houses, and shipped, packed in sawdust, around the Florida Keys by sailing vessel, in mid-summer could be purchased dockside on the Gulf Coast. In 1844, he began to write a series of articles in Apalachicola's "Commercial Advertiser" newspaper, entitled, "On the prevention of Malarial Diseases". "
I didn't know about the ice ships until I read about Dr Gorrie.
One of the ships fired on by South Carolinians in Charleston Bay during the run up to Ft. Sumter was an ice schooner out of Boston named the Rhoda H. Shannon.