King Of The Cocos (Keeling) Islands
King of the Cocos Islands was a title given by the press to John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish sea captain, and other members of his family.
He went to live on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in 1827. Queen Victoria granted the islands in perpetuity to the Clunies-Ross family in 1886. Thus, the title to the islands was claimed by his descendants until 1978 when John Cecil Clunies-Ross sold under threat of expropriation the islands to the Commonwealth of Australia for £2.5m ($4.75m). The Commonwealth had already been administering the islands since 1955.
Clunies-Ross currently lives in Perth, Western Australia, but his son John George Clunies-Ross (born 1957) lives on West Island.
Read more about King Of The Cocos (Keeling) Islands: List Clunies-Ross Family Owners of The Cocos Islands
Famous quotes containing the words king and/or islands:
“The King said to his son: “Enough of this!
The Kingdom’s yours to finish as you please.
I’m getting out tonight. Here, take the crown.””
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)