The founding coterie were clustered around the bar of the Devonshire Club, in London's St. James's Street, early in 1952, listening to Cecil Barnes recount his experiences on a Safari in Africa, from which he had recently returned. The group included Charles Dunning, the Club Secretary, who never missed an opportunity to organise a party. Cecil could illustrate his trip, said Charles, by showing his film on the following Thursday.

A week later they duly sat down to dinner in a private room at the Club and the film began to roll. A good dinner followed. Dunning, the inveterate party organiser, proposed a dinner the following month. This time he had added a few more names to the invitation list. And so it went on, meeting every month, but without a name; that came some months later, when the Town Clerk of Cape Town, present as a guest suggested that as they dined on Thursdays, the Club should be named "The Thunderers"; and so it was.