Julius Hendrik Otto Bunge
Julius Hendrik Otto Bunge (c1877-1959)
1959 Obituary [1]
THE death occurred on Apri19, at the age of 82, of Mr. Julius Hendrik Otto Bunge. He will be remembered principally as an enthusiastic exponent of the Thames barrage project, and he was in fact the secretary of the Thames Barrage Association, a body which was particularly active before the war and which ceased to exist only quite recently.
Julius Bunge was born in Holland. His early career in mechanical engineering, when he was concerned with steam turbines, pumps and waterworks plant, was spent in the U.S.A. Later, however, he held managerial positions with various firms in the glass industry in Holland and then from 1918, in this country; he was especially Interested 1n glass machinery. He became a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 1927.
In the early 1930s Bunge became organising secretary of the Thames Water Bus Company, and then secretary of the Thames Barrage Association. Support for the proposed barrage became so strong that a public inquiry was arranged, just before the war. It was never held, however, because the Committee of Imperial Defence opposed the scheme because of its vulnerability to bombing.
However, Bunge's book "Tideless Thames in Future London" was published in 1944. He set out all the arguments for the barrage, and answered his critics quite fully in this book. In many ways it is a pity that Bunge or his Association are not active to-day, for the barrage is once again a live subject, following the Waverley Committee's recommendation that a barrier should be provided across the river to stop the penetration of storm surges. That is only one new factor however, since a great deal of research on pollution and the hydraulic behaviour of the river has now been done and a large-scale hydraulic model of the tidal Thames has been built. Thus many of the pre-war controversies could now be resolved scientifically. It may well be that Bunge's ideas will still find enthusiastic advocates in the future, and that, like many innovators, he proposed them twenty or thirty year too soon.