F. W. L. Thomas

Captain Frederick William Leopold Thomas, c.1812–1885, RN, FSA (Scot) was a naval officer, photographer, and historian. Thomas was a captain in the Royal Navy, a hydrographer working for the Admiralty (a successor to his father George Thomas), charting the waters around the Northern and Western isles of Scotland. He sailed with Captain Otter, on HMS Porcupine, on the voyage to St Kilda. There Thomas took the earliest photographs ever taken of St Kilda. Thomas was a member of the Photographic Society of Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. Commencing in 1851 he authored several papers discussing the history of the Northern and Western Isles. He died in Edinburgh in 1885. In 2004, a television documentary employing Thomas's 1860 photography was broadcast on Grampian Television.