[3] In 1869, Arnt Leonard Thesen sailed to South Africa along with his large family in their schooner, the Albatros, after his ship-owning and timber company in Stavanger collapsed the previous year as a result of the Second Schleswig War of 1864-67.

Once there, they encountered the Swedish-Norwegian consul, Carl Gustaf Åkerberg, who notified them about transport shipping shortages along the South African coast and how they could take advantage of that situation; the plan to sail on to New Zealand was first delayed and then scrapped altogether.

Following Arnt Leonard's death in 1875, ownership of the company was passed to one of his sons, Charles Wilhelm Thesen, and it expanded into additional ships and into yet other areas of work, such as oyster farming, whaling, hardware stores, and gold mining.

[4] In the 1890s added about 90 families, most from Sunnmøre, by boat the long road to South Africa and Kwazulu-Natal.

In 1882 a party of 246 Norwegian immigrants settled in nearby Marburg near Port Shepstone[5] and played a large part in the development of the area.

[citation needed] Now there is a thinning in the ranks of the first and second generation immigrants - those who kept their Norwegian identity.