13MEMORIAL
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MEMORIAL |
THOMAS HENRY BOWER
1911 - 1988
B. Carr-Brown (Trintoc)
Thomas (Tom) Henry Bower died quietly at his home in Maraval, Trinidad on Wednesday 2nd November, 1988, four days
after the Geological Society of Trinidad and Tobago made him an honorary member in recognition of his invaluable
contribution to our understanding of the geology of Trinidad.
Tom not only had a successful, fulfilling professional career most of it spent in his adopted home of Trinidad
and Tobago, but enjoyed a happy and fruitful marriage and family life, and is survived by his wife, Anna, and six
children, one of whom, Peter, is a consulting geologist in Alberta, Canada. (Plate
4).
Tom was born on 21st April, 1911, in Sheffield, England. He received his primary and secondary education in Sheffield.
In 1931 he gained his B.Sc in geography, with first class honours, from the University and one year later his Diploma
of Education from the same institution. In 1932 he was made a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and taught
geography at secondary school level in Sheffield. He then entered Cambridge University where he studied geology
with zoology and botany, and graduated with his B.A. in geology on 28th October 1935. While at Cambridge Tom was
awarded two travelling scholarships which took him to classical geological sites in Newfoundland and across the
U.S.A Tom was a Cambridge 'blue' in football and a member of the Falcons Club of Cambridge University. Although
Tom was very frail when I interviewed him at home the week before the Geological Society's presentation, his pleasure
was obvious when he and Anna showed me his turquoise and dark blue Falcon Club tie and cummerbund which he had
first worn to dances and on other social occasions more than half a century ago.
After graduation from Cambridge, Tom had to find a job. In 1937, Dr. Wordy, Tom's Cambridge University tutor, recommended
him to his friend Dr. Hans Kugler, who was on one or his recruiting campaigns for the Northern Venezuelan
Petroleum Company (N.V.P.) He was looking for academically outstanding, robust young recruits. Two important
criteria had to be met by his recruits - physical fitness and robust health in order to survive the hazardous health
conditions to which geologists were normally exposed in the field in Latin America (and Trinidad), and the ability
to work in isolated situations with people of different ethnic origin and cultural and educational backgrounds.
Tom's academic qualifications, personality and excellent physical condition obviously satisfied Hans Kugler and
in 1937 he began his professional career as a geologist with the Northern Venezuelan Petroleum Company, a subsidiary
of Trinidad Leaseholds Limited (T.L.L.)
From the outset Tom was engaged in geological field mapping in Falcon, Western Venezuela. His associates included
Hans Kugler, who managed the Venezuela and Trinidad exploration interests of Trinidad Leaseholds Limited, Dr. H.H.
Suter, who was later chief geologist at T.L.L., Mr. Charles Lee, who became T.L.L.'s Guayaguayare field manager,
Dr. R.O. Young, who was to map in detail the surface geology of the Forest Reserve field, and Mr. Hans Woffler,
field party surveyor, who later became the chief surveyor of T.L.L. in Pointe-a-Pierre (Plate 5).
With the outbreak of World War 2 imminent, T.L.L. began to consolidate its exploration operations in Trinidad under
Dr. Kugler's direction, and in 1938 Tom and his associates were transferred to Trinidad, where all of them became
prominent in petroleum exploration. Thus began Tom's long professional association with the Trinidad petroleum
industry, interrupted only by a brief stint with Texaco in Canada from 1958 - 1959.
On arriving in Trinidad in 1938, he was initially stationed at Pointe-a-Pierre. He lived and worked in Forest Reserve
in 1945, but in 1946 returned to the Pointe-a-Pierre office. In 1939 Tom met his wife-to be, Anna de Montrichard,
a Trinidadian, at a birthday party and dance in Port of Spain. The next day they attended a picnic with friends
in Manzanilla and three days after they first met, Tom proposed. Anna accepted. They had six children and a long,
happy marriage. Like Tom, the children were natural athletes and excelled at sports and academically, while at
St. Peter's School in Pointe-a-Pierre. Tom played football and tennis and with Anna was active in the dramatics
section of the Pointe-a-Pierre club. He was also a keen sailor and with dinghy in Trinidad and started the GPl4
sailing class.
Tom did extensive subsurface mapping of the Forest Reserve field and of the surface and subsurface mudflow occurrences
there and in southwest Palo Seco (Grande Ravine). His 1951 A.A.P. G. paper on the mudflow plug of the Central Uplift
of Forest Reserve was, to my knowledge, the first description of this type of geological feature (in contrast to
Mississippi mud lumps), and his 1968 summary of the geology of the Forest Reserve field remains the standard reference
for that area.
Those of us who knew Tom remember him as the archetypical field geologist (more than 42,000 field samples are
recorded in his name at the Pointe-a-Pierre Geological Laboratory) and tend to forget that for a significant
part of his career he was actively engaged in the exploitation geology of the major oilfields of Trinidad, in particular
the Barrackpore, Wilson, Forest Reserve and Guayaguayare fields, and in tertiary recovery projects in the Barrackpore-Wilson,
Cruse and Guapo fields. Tom also worked briefly for Kern Trinidad oilfields after his return from Canada, before
rejoining Texaco Trinidad in 1960.
Tom wrote over fifty reports, covering topics such as exploration proposals, development geology programmes, tertiary
recovery techniques and technology, analysis of Trinidad structural patterns, tar sand evaluation, groundwater
development, formation testing, perforation equipment performance, lease evaluation etc.
I first met Tom in 1962 when I was a field geologist in Forest Reserve but my most vivid recollection of Tom is
in the bush in Guayaguayare late that year, where he was doing surface mapping in the Pilote Syncline and Navette
area. Due to the sparcity of outcrops this was done mainly by auger and oriented punch cores sampling to depths
of 5' - 10'. Etched in my mind is the image of a thin, tough, energetic figure with a flaming red beard and matching
hair, accoutred with cutlass, compass, hammer and field bag and wearing his standard bush outfit of green shorts,
yellow short-sleeved shirt and shin-high rubber boots, unbelievably immune to the sun, insect bites, underbrush
and Roseau. He went like a train through the bush, regardless of topography, covering as much territory as possible
as he mapped and coordinated the work of the angering crews. After the Navette Main Area discovery in 1959 Tom's
surface mapping in southeast Trinidad and the Navette area in particular was directly responsible for the discovery
of the so called 'Mustachio' and 'El Blanco' Navette fields. Based on analysis of wrench-fault tectonics developed
from his surface work, he identified major north-easterly offsets to the Main Area accumulations and proposed
the North East Navette and La Brea exploration prospects, which became the 'Mustachio' and 'El Blanco' fields
with the drilling of the discovery wells in 1964 and 1966 - Guayaguayare 370 and Guayaguayare 410, respectively.
The development of these fields dramatically increased Navette's production from 2,900 bopd to a peak of
35,128 bopd in February 1968, and gave Guayaguayare a new lease on life.
Tom continued mapping in southeast Trinidad until his retirement in 1970. During the closing stages of Tom's career,
Dr. W.A. (Bill) MilneHome, who is now a Senior lecturer in Hydrogeology at the University of New South Wales,
probably had the longest association of any native Trinidadian geologist with him in the field. Bill remembers: "I
first met Tom in 1966 when I joined Texaco as an assistant geologist fresh out of university The company had an
informal scheme for on-the-job training and as Tom was mapping the Cedar Grove area of Mayaro, I was assigned as
his assistant. Tom would call for me at about 4 a.m. on Monday mornings at the bachelor's mess in point-a-Pierre
and we would drive to the end of Cedar Grove Road to meet his field crew by 7 a.m. and head into the bush. By about
1 p.m. we would be out again, destined for Tom's base at the Queen's Beach Hotel in Mayaro. The rest of the day
was spent in reviewing and writing up the field notes. Tuesdays saw us back in the bush, followed by a return to
Pointe-aPierre that evening.
Tom clearly preferred the freedom of the bush to the pecking-order battles which were taking place at that time
in the geological division's office at Pointe-a-Pierre. I recall the infrequent rest stops during which he would
discuss his ideas of the stratigraphy and geological structures of southeastern Trinidad. Torn gave no formal instruction
in field mapping but I benefited immensely from observing his meticulous description and measurement of outcrops
and oriented, drive-sampler cores. In the bush he was tireless, striding over the hills and ravines, accompanied
by his dog Chico. In his position of Assistant to the Chief Geologist at Pointea-Pierre there was less time
than he would have liked to devote to pure geology. Above all, Tom was a first rate geologist."
In 1962 Tom bought Esperanza Estate in northeast Maracas Valley in the Northern Range, where he and his family
grew coffee, cocoa, citrus and avocado, which Anna marketed. During his spare time from 1965-1969, Tom and his
family built their new home on the estate 1000' up on the mountainside. It had a breathtaking view of the mountains
and valley below and was accessible to determined friends by a narrow paved road over a picturesque, shallow river
ford succeeded by a gravel road, which climbed tortuously upwards to the homestead. The family worked Esperanza
to 1982, and finally sold half of the estate, including the house, and moved to Port of Spain.
From retirement until 1982 Tom also did extensive geological consulting in Trinidad and in the Caribbean. In 1973
he was contracted by Amoco Trinidad to assist in a biostratigraphic auger-sampling programme in southeast Trinidad,
which was my last opportunity to work with him. His work included the Caroni Arena dam site evaluation, groundwater
surveys in Dominica, quarry evaluation in St. Lucia and geological surveys in Belize. During this time he also
taught geology for engineers in the Department of Civil Engineering at the St. Augustine Campus of the University
of the West Indies.
Tom went peacefully, secure in the knowledge that he had lived a productive and fulfilling family and professional
life. His contribution to the petroleum geology of Trinidad was an important one, and he will be remembered with
affection and respect by his friends and professional colleagues.
REFERENCES
Bower, T.H. (1951): Mudflow Occurrence in Trinidad, B.W.I. Am. Assoc. Petrol. Geol. Boll. 35/4,908-912.
Bower, T.H. (1968): Geology of Texaco Forest Reserve Field, Trinidad, and w.i.
Trans. IVth Caribbean Geol. Conf. Trinidad (1965), p.75-86.
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