Lot 1833

Description

Clunies Ross documents, probate document and Testament extract of Will, dated 17 May 1871 of John George Clunis (sic) Ross late of the Cocos or Kelling Islands in the Indian Ocean, Ship Owner and Merchant, both documents on vellum, Court of Probate document stamped and sealed at London 19.2.(18)74, based on copy of Will as extracted by A.M.Mertens L.S. according to the law of Batavia. Historic documents relating to the Australian administered territory of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, very fine.

Captain John Clunis Ross (which name evolved to become Clunies Ross), a Scottish sea captain who, while on voyage in his ship to Borneo in 1814, visited the Keeling Cocos Islands discovered by Captain William Keeling of the East India Company in 1608-9. Two years later the captain returned with his wife, family and mother-in-law along with eight sailor-artisans to take possession of the islands. After he died his son, John George Clunis Ross, his eldest son who had married a Balinese girl, took over control of the islands. He imported more Javanese labourers, established a more efficient method of collecting coconuts and set up a steam powered oil mill. He also gained a reputation as the creator of medicines which resulted in the islanders crediting him with some extraordinary cures and giving him the title 'Tuan Pandai' (Learned Master). The islands operated under Batavian law but in 1860 Clunis Ross went to London to request they be attached to a British colony. His request went unanswered. While on a journey to Batavia, Clunis Ross contracted typhus fever and died shortly after his return to Cocos. In his Will he left Cocos Island and his library to his eldest son and the Keeling Islands to his two daughters until they married and then they reverted to his son. Other bequests included one hundred Javanese guilders a month to a woman named Caroline Eberroya until she married. In 1886 Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies Ross family. The Commonwealth of Australia had been administering the islands since 1955 and in 1978, under threat of expropriation, the family sold the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to Australia. With research.