Thomas was a native of Nottingham, well inland. As far as I know, he had never seen the sea until he and his family boarded the Matilda Wattenbach at London Docks only a few weeks before. It did not work out well at first.
The first settlers established a shop at Port Albert just above the wharf on the English Industrial Revolution Co-operative movement model. John Shepherd ran the shop for some years and later bought it. From the early 1890s he serviced it with his own cutter , skippered by T. Bridge who often took passengers on excursions. Around 1899 John Shepherd sold the shop to George Bennett, his daughter Mildred’s husband. Mildred
