George Henry Thomas

Born

25 March 1840 at Devon

March 25th 1840 Brixham, Devon— From Janet Brock’s research

King Street, Brixham — the master mariner's family

1841

Living in Brixham, Devon Eleanor Thomas, 1816 born Devon George Thomas . 1840 born Devon William Thomas 1837 born Devon Address: King Street No occupation recorded, but father's occupation recorded on George's marriage certificate as Master Mariner— From Janet Brock’s research

In 1843

1843

Father dies.— From Janet Brock’s research

His mother remarries — John Vivians, mariner

1848

Mother remarries. John Vivians bachelor, and Eleanor Thomas, widow, were married by banns on the 22nd May, 1848 in the presence of Emanuel Shar..s and Mary Anne Vivians. Both John and Eleanor signed their names— From Janet Brock’s research

The Overgang, Lower Brixham

1851

Living with family in Brixham indexed Vicens Eleanor Vivians, 1813, Mariner's Wife, born Brixham George Thomas 1840, Son, born Brixham Sarah C. Thomas, 1844, Daughter, born Brixham John P. Vivians, 1849, Son, born Brixham Elizabeth Vivians* Visitor Address: Overgang, Lower Brixham, Devon Occupation of stepfather: Mariner *likely to be Eleanor's sister in law

— From Janet Brock’s research

North with the Brixham fleet

1855

Became a fisherman and moved to Hull with his family 'The accidental discovery of the "Silver Pits" fishing grounds in the North Sea, possibly by a Brixham fisherman, in 1850, led to a revival of the trade in Hull. Prior to 1850, a small group of Brixham fishermen had been based in Scarborough. Following the discovery, many more Brixham owners brought their vessels to Hull. The quantity of fish landed in Hull rose from 1,571 tons in 1854 to 10, 782 tons in 1864.' A History of Hull, Hugh Calvert

— From Janet Brock’s research

The Silver Pits — how Hull became a fishing port

Some time around the middle of the nineteenth century — the trade's own story said a Brixham man found it, in a hard winter about 1850 — the smacksmen working off the Yorkshire coast discovered a deep hollow in the sea floor south-east of the Dogger Bank where soles gathered in almost unbelievable quantity. They called it the Silver Pits, and it did for Hull what a gold strike does for a river town. The fish landed at Hull rose from some fifteen hundred tons in 1854 to nearly eleven thousand ten years later, and the sailing smacks of the south-coast ports — Brixham above all — came north in their dozens to work the grounds from the Humber, bringing their families, their chapel habits and their soft Devon names to the terraces growing west of the town. For half a century Hull's fishing was done under sail: ketch-rigged smacks of sixty or seventy feet, dragging a beam trawl, crewed by five — skipper, second hand, third hand, fourth hand and a boy cook, the younger ones often apprentices bound to the owner from the workhouses and reformatories of half of England.

It was an owned world, but not by the men who sailed it. By law every British vessel was divided into sixty-four shares, and the smacks belonged ashore — to smackowners with a string of boats, to fish salesmen who took shares as security, to widows and tradesmen with a sixty-fourth or two; a thriving skipper might come to hold a few sixty-fourths of the boat he sailed, but most skippers commanded other men's property for a share of what the trawl brought up, well paid in a good season and paid nothing in a bad one, and moved from smack to smack as the owners saw fit. The crew signed articles every half-year, and those printed agreements — thousands survive for Hull — carry the working life of the fleet in their margins: crews shuffled up a rank when a man left or died, apprentices listed beside their berths, and the 'untoward events' the law obliged the skipper to report. One Hull smack's articles note, in the skipper's own words, a night ninety miles out when another smack 'came alongside of us, fouled our gear and cut our warp without making any effort to get clear' — the grounds were that crowded.

It was also, plainly, a world that killed. The smacks worked the winter sea in all weathers, often in fleets that stayed out for weeks, ferrying the catch to steam cutters in open boats; men went over the side 'shipping a sea' in the ordinary way of work, and there was little to be done but what one Hull skipper was reported doing in 1886 — going on deck at the alarm and making 'every effort to save the unfortunate man', who sank at once. The skipper's duty then was to bring the news home to a police constable, and the family's to the newspaper's deaths column. The apprentice system had its own shame: in 1882 a Hull skipper was hanged for the murder of a fourteen-year-old apprentice, and the scandal forced reform on the whole port. And yet the same fleet bred its plain heroisms — smacks standing by wrecks, crews pulled off sinking colliers and drifting barques by men in open boats.

It lasted barely fifty years. Steam trawlers appeared at Hull in the mid-1880s, fished in any weather and answered to no wind, and within a decade the sailing smacks were being sold away — to Faroe, to Iceland, into the coasting trade — and the fleeting system, the apprentices and the sixty-fourth shares of the sail era went with them. A man who had come north with the Brixham boats as a boy could, in one working life, see the whole world that brought him rise and vanish.

Census · 1861

1861

Not traced— From Janet Brock’s research

Marries Jane Ardington — Register Office, Hull

1865

21

February 1865, Register Office, Hull: George Thomas, 24, bachelor, fisherman, Manchester Place, Waverley Street — father William Thomas (deceased), Master Mariner — and Jane Ardington, 22, spinster, domestic servant (housemaid), Temple Court, Cogan Street — father Robert Ardington, joiner. Witnesses George Shears and Ann Foster; both parties signed.

— Marriage certificate (1865) — the family's copy

Married Jane Ardington

21 February 1865

21 February 1865, Register Office, Hull: George Thomas, 24, bachelor, fisherman, Manchester Place, Waverley Street (father William Thomas, deceased, Master Mariner) and Jane Ardington, 22, spinster, domestic servant, Temple Court, Cogan Street (father Robert Ardington, joiner). Both signed.— Marriage, 1865 — Register Office, Hull

In 1870

1870

Death of daughter Sarah Eleanor aged 1— From Janet Brock’s research

New Buildings, Walker Street — fisherman

1871

Living in the parish of St. Luke, Holy Trinity, Hull George Thomas, 1841, Head, born Brixham Jane Thomas, 1843, Wife, born Hembrie(sic) Robert Ardington Thomas, 1867, Son, born Hull George William Thomas, 1869, Son, born Hull Sarah Ellenah Thomas, 1870, Daughter, born Hull Address: 2 New Buildings, Walker Street Occupation: Fisherman

— From Janet Brock’s research

Away at sea — the family at New Buildings

1881

Not present, assumed away at sea Jane Thomas, 1843, Seaman's Wife, born Hembrough(sic) George William Thomas, aged 12, Son, born Hull Charles Thomas, aged 9, Son, born Hull Sarah Thomas, aged 6, Daughter, born Hull Arthur Thomas, aged, 3, Son, born Hull Address: 2 New Buildings, Walker Street, Hull— From Janet Brock’s research

The naming of Jenny

1882

Birth of Jane Thomas 'George was away at sea when Jane was baptised. On hearing that she had been named Jane against his wishes he was very upset and said she must be called Jenny, which she was throughout her life' Ida Crabb, Granddaughter— From Janet Brock’s research

Skipper of the Burton Constable — a man lost off Spurn

1886

A FISHERMAN DROWNED IN THE NORTH SEA.—On Wednesday morning George Thomas, skipper of the smack Burton, living at 2, New-buildings, Great Thornton-street, Hull, reported to Police-constable Simpson (77), residing at Grimsby-lane, that about 4.40 p.m. on the 1st inst. their vessel was lying to at sea near Spurn, bearing 95 miles E. by N., when they shipped a sea which carried overboard the second hand, named George Cant, 25 years of age. Charles Fletcher, a deck hand, residing at 20, New Zealand-terrace, Providence-row, Beverley-road, was the only person on deck at the time of the accident, and on seeing what had taken place he gave an alarm. The skipper at once went on deck and made every effort to save the unfortunate man, but he at once sank. Deceased was a married man, and resided at 10, Seaton's-terrace, Walcot-street.

— "A Fisherman Drowned in the North Sea" — Hull Daily Mail (4 March 1886)

Ship No. 53281. Name: Burton Constable. Letters & No: H77. Owner: George Simpson. Skipper: George Thomas. 2nd Hand: George Cant. 4th Hand: C Fletcher. Apprentices on board: Edward Skelton (3rd hand), Joseph Duckett (cook). Record of Death or Injury: 1

March, North Sea, Dogger Bank, about 95 miles from Spurn W by S — George Cant, 2nd Hand, drowned, washed overboard by shipping a sea.

— The ship's own record — the Burton Constable's crew agreement (1886)

Two families on the water — the ones who carried, and the ones who caught

Two of the families that married into this one lived their whole lives on the water — and at opposite ends of the trade. The Richmonds of Thorne were keelmen: they carried. Their living was freight — hauling coal, corn and cake in flat-bottomed sailing keels along the rivers and canals and across the Humber, from the South Yorkshire pits down to the ports and back. The Thomases of the Devon coast and then Hull were fishermen: they caught. Their living was the harvest of the sea itself, worked from a deep-sea sailing smack out on the North Sea grounds, where the boat was not a carrier but a hunter and a voyage was worth whatever the trawl brought up. One family moved other people's goods; the other brought home a catch that was its own.

The difference ran through everything. The keel was built flat and shallow to sit on the mud and thread the canal locks, and it rarely left the sheltered inland waters and the estuary; the fishing smack was built deep and sea-kindly to live for days on the open North Sea. The keelman's dangers were the estuary's — the racing tides, the shifting sands, the fog and the crowded traffic that ran small craft down or drove them aground: it was on the Sunk sands off Grimsby that Samuel Richmond's Reliance was found abandoned and making water. The fisherman's dangers were the open sea's — the gale far from land, the man lost overboard: the smack George Henry Thomas skippered lost a hand drowned, set down in the vessel's own account. A keelman who owned his boat carried its risk as a man of business; a fisherman lived or starved by the catch. You would not have found a Thomas working a keel on the Don, or a Richmond shooting a trawl on the Dogger. And yet, three generations on, the two waters met on dry land: the keelman's great-grandson, Christopher Brock, married the fisherman's great-granddaughter, Janet Drewery — the carrying family and the catching family, joined at last well inland, in the quiet of the East Riding.

Away at sea — the family at Arion Terrace

1891

Not present, assumed away at sea Living in the parish of Newington Jane Thomas, Wife, 1843, aged 48, born Emborough(sic) George W Thomas, Son, aged 22, born Hull, Baker Charles Thomas, aged 19, Son, born Hull, Groom, Waggonette Driver Sarah Thomas, Daughter, aged 16, born Hull, Net Braider Arthur Thomas, Son, aged 12, born Hull Jane Thomas . 1882, Daughter aged 9, born Hull Harry Thomas, 1884, aged 7, Son, born Hull Address: 4, Arion Terrace, Gillette Street, Hull Occupation: Fisherman 'Became Skipper of a trawler (Whaler?) and the family were therefore regarded as quite affluent.' Ida Crabb, Granddaughter

— From Janet Brock’s research

8 Arion Terrace — fisherman past sixty

1901

Living in Hull George Thomas, 1841, Head, born Bricham (sic) Jane Thomas, 1842, Wife, born Embrough (sic) Jane Thomas 1882, Daughter, born Hull Harry Thomas, 1884, Son, born Hull Address: 8, Arion Terrace, Gillette Street, Hull Occupation: Fisherman— From Janet Brock’s research

Widowed — Jane Ardington dies at sixty-one

1904

Jane Thomas, female, aged 62 — death registered April–June 1904, Sculcoates district, Yorkshire. (Volume 9D, page 100.)— His wife's death registration (Q2 1904)

61 Edinburgh Street — two doors from Jenny

1916

Death of George Henry Thomas in Hull aged 76 years. At the time of his death he was living at 61 Edinburgh Street; cause of death was cancer of sigmoid flexure.— From Janet Brock’s research

Died

8 April 1916

George H Thomas, male, aged 76 — death registered April–June 1916, Sculcoates district, Yorkshire. (Volume 9D, page 182.)— Death registration (Q2 1916)