14 | The Tribune | Weekend
Friday, August 27, 2021
history THE ESSO fuel dock on Hog Island.
How I remember Hog Island FOR years, I gazed across Nassau Harbour, looking at Hog Island. It wasn’t until Huntington Hartford appeared on the scene that the name Paradise Island popped up, and on May 23, 1964, The Bahamas government ruled that “from and after the coming into force of this act, the island lying to the north of the island of New Providence, heretofore known as Hog Island, shall be called and referred to as Paradise Island”. Slowly at first, but at an everincreasing speed, the personality of Hog Island changed from an industrial area to what Paradise Island is today. This picture of what used to be Esso’s retail fuel dock on Hog Island reminds me of my first job, in Esso’s marketing department. For the first few weeks, I worked in every department to get a grounding of what their business was about. My day started at 7.30am, when I stepped aboard Esso’s boat to their oil-storage plant located across the harbour.
PAUL C ARANHA
FORGOTTEN FACTS On the way to Hog Island we drove the barge over the undersea pipelines looking for oil slicks. On arrival, we opened the valves on the pipelines
to Nassau, turned on the pumps and watched the pressure gauge on each line. A steady pressure indication meant that the pipelines were not leaking, and we then climbed to the top of each of the five storage tanks, to measure how much fuel was in each. These readings should agree with what was there the night before. Only once do I remember a leak in one of the underwater fuel lines. We had to drive the barge slowly over the pipelines, looking very carefully for any oil slick. Finding it was easy and the barge was anchored in place, so a diver could descend to the sea floor and clamp a repair collar around the leak. The diver would stay submerged until the pump was turned on and the pressure remained steady. The diver wore a heavy diving helmet, while another man worked a hand pump on deck to supply air to his submerged colleague. To the west of Esso’s plant was (Sir) Roland Symonette’s Shipyard, which later moved to East Bay
Street. The move was a foretaste of the downturn in industrial activity. Fuel was imported from a refinery in Aruba, transported in the tanks of the m/v Inagua Shipper, which tied up at the Esso dock and pumped gasoline, kerosene, Diesel oil and aviation fuel into the waiting tanks. On arrival, the Shipper was so low in the water that one could look down on it. As the fuel was pumped ashore, the ship would rise up continuously and people on the dock saw the hull at eye-level. Esso had the only fuel farm in the Bahamas and sold fuels to its competitors – Sinclair Cuba Oil Company, Texaco. Whenever anyone told me that Sinclair or Texaco gas was better than Esso, I could change the topic by pointing out that both of our competitors bought their fuels from Esso. • For questions and comments, please send an e-mail to islandairman@gmail.com
