An­ge­lo Bisses­sars­ingh

From the 1840s un­til well in­to the 1950s, the sug­ar hold­ings of Wm Ten­nant and Co were for­mi­da­ble. The greater part of their es­tates was in the Na­pari­mas.Ten­nant's al­so op­er­at­ed a mer­can­tile es­tab­lish­ment at King's Wharf in San Fer­nan­do which ex­port­ed rum, sug­ar and mo­lasses and im­port­ed hard­ware for the es­tates–from nails to com­plete steam boil­er en­gines for sug­ar fac­to­ries.

King's Wharf was orig­i­nal­ly con­struct­ed as the pri­ma­ry ship­ping port for the rich sug­ar dis­trict of the Na­pari­mas, and its de fac­to cap­i­tal, San Fer­nan­do.Its rel­a­tive­ly deep moor­ing made it pos­si­ble for fair­ly large ships to call close to shore. Fronting the wharf were the ware­hous­es of the large firms in San Fer­nan­do. Ten­nant's Es­tates owned one of these ware­hous­es which was ini­tial­ly from the 1850s a cen­tral sup­ply de­pot for its vast hold­ings which ex­tend­ed to co­coa, sug­ar and tim­ber plan­ta­tions.

Soon, the sup­ply side of the busi­ness had be­come a full-fledged hard­ware em­po­ri­um and grew so quick­ly that a spa­cious two-storey build­ing, boast­ing a wrought-iron balustrade, was erect­ed in 1911 on King's Wharf to en­com­pass the large stock of trade items.This was not a mo­ment too soon, since both the oil age and the mo­tor­car had hit Trinidad.

In the in­fan­cy of the lo­cal oil in­dus­try, many small com­pa­nies were reg­is­tered be­fore 1920 to prospect for oil, many of which nev­er even got off to a start for want of cap­i­tal.A Bee­by Thomp­son, a ge­ol­o­gist, was prospect­ing in the Guapo area in the pe­ri­od 1909-10 and came to the de­ter­mi­na­tion that vast quan­ti­ties of oil lay un­der the sur­face.

The suc­cess­es of Thomp­son and the es­tab­lish­ment of a re­fin­ery by Unit­ed British Oil­fields Trinidad at Point Fortin in 1912 made the lands from La Brea to Point Fortin ex­ceed­ing­ly valu­able. These lands were for­mer sug­ar es­tates, found­ed by French set­tlers in the late 1780s.Ten­nant's ac­quired lands in Guapo, Fyz­abad, Pe­nal and Bar­rack­pore, where oil-bear­ing sands were present.

The hard­ware sold drilling ap­pa­ra­tus, en­gines for turn­ing the ma­chin­ery, valves, fit­tings and in­deed every­thing need­ed to out­fit a drilling ex­pe­di­tion.Ten­nant's al­so did ship chan­dlery, since up to the 1930s San Fer­nan­do was still a busy port. Since the mo­tor­car had ar­rived for good, the store al­so stocked tyres, bat­ter­ies, spark­plugs and even car­bide lamps since elec­tric lamps on cars were a new fan­gled no­tion.

In the 1930s, Ten­nant Es­tates di­vest­ed its hard­ware busi­ness and the build­ing on King's Wharf was leased to Neal and Massy Ltd, which was formed by the merg­er of Neal En­gi­neer­ing Ltd and Charles Massey Ltd, two ri­val au­to­mo­bile deal­ers.Chevro­let cars, trucks, Buicks, Vaux­halls and Bed­ford trucks were sold there in ad­di­tion to Massey Fer­gu­son agri­cul­tur­al im­ple­ments.

Neal and Massy moved to new spa­cious premis­es on the east of San Fer­nan­do in the 1950s and the his­toric 1911 struc­ture was leased to the gov­ern­ment for a post of­fice and reg­is­trar's of­fice. It has been most late­ly used as an of­fice of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture.