George Porter (mariner)

His home was converted into Sirius Private Hospital, a building which stands today for its historical significance to the area.

She was the daughter of a Kentish dredger, Henry Bassett, operating in the badly silted estuaries of the Swale and Medway.

[1] Porter was a senior sea captain in the employ of the British East India Company, working mainly as a whaler.

[2] The deteriorating economic conditions in Queenborough and his positive experiences in the western Pacific seem to have led to the family’s decision to emigrate to Australia with most of their children in October 1839.

The migration may also have been influenced by his cousin, Captain William Field Porter (born, 1784), who had financed and led what was to be an unsuccessful party of settlers to Port Lincoln in two ships, nine months earlier.