| THE HISTORY OF GEOPHYSICAL PROSPECTING |    |
| PART FOUR - VISCOUNT COWDRAY | |
Eminence in the field of engineering enterprises for Europe and the Americas might weIl go the London firm of S. Pearson and Son. The son of the "and Son" was Weetman Dickinson Pearson (1856-1927), First Viscount Cowdray. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Weetman Dickinson of High Hoyland, Yorkshire.
Every oil man in America has heard of Mr. Pearson, Lord Cowdray. He is the only Englishman so honored. Lord Cowdray became known to the petroleum fraternity in the first decade of the twentieth century when he headed one of the most famous oil ventures in North America, the Mexican Eagle Oil Company. To help him in this undertaking of finding oil structures, Pearson employed Everette Lee De Golyer fresh out of the University of Oklahoma. Actually, young Everette did not even have his degree when Weetman Pearson nicknamed De Golyer, "my lucky charm." The ability to pick the right man for the right job was to be ranked first and foremost among that list of admirable business qualities possessed by this hard-working Englishman.
Perhaps second on that list was Pearson's dedication to the welfare of his employees. He insisted that De Golyer return to Norman, Oklahoma, and finish his degree of B. S. in Geology. Pearson furnished the bonus which paid all of the expenses of De Golyer and of his young bride at the University of Oklahoma.
Late in the seeond decade of the twentieth century, Pearson's pounds and De Golyer's knowledge of earth seience went together to form the Amerada Petroleum Corporation, which became the leader in the field of seismology as applied to discovery of oil fields in the third and fourth decades. Amerada got its name from a combination of America and Canada.
This high niche in the petroleum world would be enough honor for most men. To Lord Cowdray his oil interests were but a minor part of his engineering achievements, although it should be noted that his income from petroleum did constitute the majority item in his total profits.
S. Pearson of S. Pearson and Son, Weetman's grandfather, founded the engineering firm in 1844. Samuel Pearson was a native of Scholes in the West Riding distriet of Yorkshire and the firm did its first building and contracting in the town of Huddersfield. When his eldest son, George, became a father, with the birth of Weetman on July 15, 1956, Samuel took George into the business and the firm adopted the name of S. Pearson and Son. George had married Sarah Weetman Dickinson in 1855.
Young Weetman spent most of his early years at the family home in Bradford. Bradford had become the central office of S. Pearson and Son. As soon as Weetman was old enough he was sent to a private school known as "Hallfield," in Bowling, near Bradford. From Hallfield he was moved at the age of thirteen to a boarding school at Harrogate, Pannel College. Three years later at the age of sixteen, Weetman finished his formal education at Pennel College. His favorite subjects were mechanics and mathematics.
In the middle of September, 1872, Weetman accompanied a Mr. Hardwick to Leeshaw to learn to survey and to level. He had started his career with the firm he would some day carry to the heights of the technical profession. At the beginning of October he became a subscriber to the Mechanics' Institute Library and French class and attended this class for the first time. Weetman had an understanding with his father, George, that if within a year he had become proficient in French he was to have a holiday in France. However, as it turned out, George and Sarah went to Paris instead of their son. George left Weetman in charge of the brickyard. By 1874, Weetman had taken responsible charge of the brick portion of the business.
In the sixties and seventies of the nineteenth century it was still an axiom with parents who were in business that their sons should "learn their business in the business" and for exceptionally gifted lads like Weetman it was, if not the best, a very good way. No one in later life was more rapid and accurate in working out the theoretical side of his problems, and in one way of another, Weetman got all the scientific training that he needed for this purpose.
After nearly three years of learning the business, a period of long days of hard work in surveying, blacksmithing and accounting, Weetman was thought by his father to have earned a diversion. The diversion was a four months' tour in North America with a roving commission to keep his eyes open for business, especially the business of bricks, glazed tiles and sanitary piping, the manufacture of which is their works at Bradford was a specialty of the firm and one of the chief sources of revenue.
On Weetman's nineteenth birthday, July 15, 1875, he set sail from Liverpool as a second-class passenger on the Inman liner "City of Richmond." It was 400 feet in length and was registered at 3000 tons. Steam furnished the means of locomotion but it was too early to completely rely on this newfangled source of energy; there was in addition to the steam engine, a complete set of sails. The crossing required nine days and went far enough north to sight two icebergs. Upon arrival in New York City, young Pearson put up at the Barnum Hotel. Thus began the grand adventure for an Englishman in this bright new western world.
In the year 1927, shortly before his death, Pearson wrote three significant paragraphs about his American tour, which will be reproduced here:
"I saw the principal towns in Canada and the United States east of the Mississippi - west of the river counted for little in those days. I was in Chicago three years after the great fire and stayed in its much advertised fire-proof hotel. Then from St. Louis down the Mississippi to New Orleans by boat, a trip which took ten days, and through the slave country within ten years of the termination of the Civil War. I saw the negro revelling in his new freedom, but with many difficulties between him and the white man still to adjust. In Washington I saw General Grant, who had become President. These were experiences vastly interesting to an unsophisticated youth of nineteen.“
"I returned to England with an intense admiration for the Americans. I marvelled at their progress during the short 100 years of existence as a nation. Some of their methods of work were instructive, their energy and ambition infectious. I returned to England seeing no reason why the great things being done in America could not be done elsewhere. When I say that I had taken the Americans at their own valuation you will realize how hugely I had been impressed by them.“
"Yet, within a few years, I had the real joy of contracting, on behalf of my firm, with an American company, for the completion of the tunnel under the River Hudson between New Jersey and New York. The construction was only possible by the British invention of the Greathead shield system. Sir Benjamin Baker, the engineer for the Forth Bridge, was appointed engineer.“
In order to better understand how the Pearsons took to tunneling in the year 1889, we need to go back ten years. In 1879 compressed air was first used in tunnel work on a small shaft at Antwerp, and in the same year in New York by De Witt C. Haskins. The New York tunnel which occupied the time and talents of Mr. Haskins was the famous first Hudson River tunnel from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Morton Street, New York City.
1875-1879 had been aperiod of engineering planning; 1879-1882 became a period of activity and disaster. Compressed air was not enough, a shield system was needed to protect the workers from cave-ins and from seepage of water. Twenty men died in one day. Discouraged by loss of life and hampered by dwindling funds the tunneling stopped with less than 2000 feet completed.
On November- 7, 1889, S. Pearson and Son signed a contract and took over the completion of the tunnel. A shield was built in Scotland, shipped to New York, and lowered in sections into the tunnel, after a certain amount of clean-up and other preliminary work had been done. The mechanical difficulties had been solved but there remained the critical problem of eliminating "caisson disease," more popularly known as the "bends." The medical air-lock was eventually perfected by one of the Pearson engineers, Mr. Ernest W. Moir. Beds and medical supplies were contained within the air-lock so that the men could be comfortable during the slow process of decompression.
With the successful operation of the medical air-lock, work went forward with rapidity. More than 2000 feet was added to the original tunnel in less than a year. Then the funds ran out in 1891 with the end in sight. Pearson maintained the air-pressure for several months at his own expense but additional monies could not be raised. The tunnel project was again abandoned, this time for ten years. Mr. Charles M. Jacobs finished the work in 1908, employing the methods perfected by S. Pearson and Son.
True to his principle of not asking others to do what he was unwilling to do himself, Weetman Pearson insisted on going into the region of high airpressure. In December of 1890 he became seized with the "bends" and became temporarily paralyzed from the waist down. Even after treatment in the medical air-lock, he remained in serious condition. It was only after an extended period of recuperation in Mexico City that he regained the full use of his limbs.
Weetman Pearson had gone to Mexico City a year before and the first of the projects for the Mexican Government, which were destined to do so much to modernize that country’s economy, was under way when Pearson made his journey south for the purpose of recuperation from the "bends."