Clarence Birdseye and the Gloucester Fisherman
In the 1920s it was nearly impossible to purchase fresh seafood in much of the United States. Major inland cities with good railroad connections could often have fresh produce of the sea, but it arrived packed in barrels of ice, which made the shipping costs expensive. Oysters and clams could be found in Cincinnati and St. Louis as a result of this method, but fresh fish was rare. Fish frozen slowly, by packing it in ice, became watery, lost flavor, and was unattractive. If one truly wanted salt water fish as a part of one’s daily diet one needed to live near the seacoast. That changed in Massachusetts in 1925.
That year the General Seafood Corporation opened a fish processing plant in Gloucester, MA. The opening of a fish processing facility in Gloucester, a center of the fishing industry for as long as anyone could remember, was nothing remarkable. It was the nature of the plant which was different. This plant, after cleaning and preparing the fish for market, used a new technique, called flash freezing, which had been created by Clarence Birdseye. The flash freezing technique produced frozen fish which when thawed retained the characteristics, taste, and appearance of fresh fish. Rather than freeze the fish and then package it, Birdseye sealed the fish in a carton and froze both, under pressure.
Birdseye next developed a means by which his method of freezing fish could mass produce product and it was this method which was employed by the newest addition to the Gloucester fish industry. Birdseye’s system was called the double belt freezer. Birdseye used cold saltwater, which freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water due to its salt content. How much lower is dependent on the amount of salt present in the water. Birdseye’s system used two belts to move the already packaged fish between them through the saltwater, which froze the fish quickly and prevented the development of ice crystals. He received a patent for his invention and the frozen fish industry was underway.
By 1927 Birdseye was extending his method of flash freezing foods to other perishables, including beef, poultry, some fruits, and some vegetables. He quickly learned that some fruits and vegetables took readily to his methods while others were better off being canned. In 1929 he sold the company to the Postum Company and Goldman Sachs, along with the many patents he had obtained, and continued to work for the new company, which eventually became Birds Eye Frozen Foods. Despite becoming a rich man through the sale, Birdseye continued to invent improved methods of food preservation through freezing.
Clarence Birdseye received dozens patents related to the frozen food industry of which he is considered to be the most important innovator and founder. Some are related to freezing, others to preparation of the product prior to freezing, such as an industrial fish scaler and a bin for the storage of fish. The Gloucester Fisherman was not a Birdseye mascot; he belonged to a competitor, Gorton’s. But it was Birdseye who created the industry of preserving foods through the method of flash freezing, which today is applied to virtually any perishable food