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:
“I’ll stake all my soul
on that beauty,
till God shall awake
again in men’s hearts,
who have said he is dead
our King and our Lover.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“Consider the islands bearing the names of all the saints, bristling with forts like chestnut-burs, or Echinidæ, yet the police will not let a couple of Irishmen have a private sparring- match on one of them, as it is a government monopoly; all the great seaports are in a boxing attitude, and you must sail prudently between two tiers of stony knuckles before you come to feel the warmth of their breasts.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)