Sir Albert Fuller Ellis (28 August 1869 – 11 July 1951) was a prospector in the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. He discovered

phosphate In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthophosphoric acid . The phosphate or orthophosphate ion is derived from phosph ...

deposits on the Pacific islands of Nauru and

Banaba BanabaThe correct spelling and etymology in Gilbertese should be ''Bwanaba'' but the Constitution of Kiribati writes Banaba. Because of the spelling in English or French, the name was very often written Paanapa or Paanopa, as it was in 1901 Ac ...

(Ocean Island) in 1900. He was the British Phosphate Commissioner for

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

from 1921 to 1951.

Biography

Ellis was born in

Roma, Queensland Roma is a rural town and locality in the Maranoa Region, Queensland, Australia. It is the administrative centre of the Maranoa Region. The town was incorporated in 1867 and is named after Lady Diamantina Bowen (née di Roma), the wife of Sir ...

; his family moved to

Waikato Waikato () is a local government region of the upper North Island of New Zealand. It covers the Waikato District, Waipa District, Matamata-Piako District, South Waikato District and Hamilton City, as well as Hauraki, Coromandel Peninsul ...

in New Zealand, where he attended the Cambridge District High School. At the age of 18, Ellis joined his brothers James and George in working for

John T. Arundel John T. Arundel (1 September 1841 – 30 November 1919) was an English entrepreneur who was instrumental in the development of the mining of phosphate rock on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba (Ocean Island). Williams & Macdonald (1985) ...

and Co. Their father George C. Ellis, a chemist, and later a farmer in New Zealand, was a director of the company.

and Co. was engaged in Pacific trading of phosphates,

copra Copra (from ) is the dried, white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted. Traditionally, the coconuts are sun-dried, especially for export, before the oil, also known as copra oil, is pressed out. The oil extracted from co ...

, and pearl shell. While working in the company's Sydney office in 1899 Ellis determined that a large rock from Nauru being used as a doorstop was rich in phosphate. Following the discovery Ellis traveled to Ocean Island and Nauru and confirmed the discovery. Operations on Ocean Island (known by the natives as Banaba) commenced three months after the discovery. Ellis managed the development of the phosphate resources on Nauru, and mining began in 1906 under an arrangement with the German administrators of the island. The native King had no jurisdiction over any lands on Banaba. Ronald Wright, in his book ''On Fiji Islands'', writes: Following

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Nauru became a mandate of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the countries appointed the British Phosphate Commission to manage the extraction and export of phosphate from Nauru. Ellis was appointed the BPC for New Zealand. The native population were left to the horrors of Japanese occupation in the Second World War, and then subsequently moved to the island of Rabi, since their home island had by now been completely destroyed by the mining operation instigated by Ellis. In the 1928 New Year Honours, Ellis was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George, and in the 1938 King's Birthday Honours was created a

Knight Bachelor The title of Knight Bachelor is the basic rank granted to a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not inducted as a member of one of the organised orders of chivalry; it is a part of the British honours system. Knights Bachelor are th ...

. Ellis wrote a book about the history of the Pacific phosphate islands, his discovery and subsequent development of the phosphate industry on the islands, ''Ocean Island and Nauru — their Story'' was published in Australia in 1935.

References

Books

*
An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand
', 1966

Book Published

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis 1869 births 1951 deaths Australian emigrants to New Zealand New Zealand Companions of the Order of St Michael and St George New Zealand Knights Bachelor People from Auckland People from Roma, Queensland Phosphate mining in Nauru

Biography

See also

References

Books

Book Published