Pacific Islands Company

Date: 1896-1908

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-1175

Description: Correspondence, to and from the London office of the companies, is between J T Arundel, G Ellis and A H Gaze. Correspondence from Arundel in Nova Scotia, Honolulu, Ocean Island, Melbourne, San Francisco, New York, Plymouth, Japan, New Zealand, Sydney, Tahiti; mainly to the London Head Office. Includes general correspondence, shipping details, telegrams, machinery details and financial affairs. Source of title - Transcribed Arrangement: Arranged alphabetically, primarily by addressee. The Pacific Islands Company (PIC), formed in 1897 from J T Arundel and Co, a Pacific trading and phosphate company, had as chairman Lord Stanmore (Sir Arthur Gordon), with John Arundel as vice-chairman. In 1900, Albert Ellis, a company employee, confirmed that Banaba island contained huge deposits of phosphate. The PIC gained an imperial mining licence after British annexation of Banaba. With exclusive mining rights for an annual payment of £50 to the Banabans, the company was soon making up to £125,000 per annum. Eventually the PPC agreed to provide for a trust fund for environmental damage; that committment was never fulfilled. In 1902 the PIC sold its other interests and formed the Pacific Phosphate Company ltd (PPC) with Jaluit Gesellschaft of Hamburg, giving it mining rights on German Nauru. After World War I, the PPC was replaced by the British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC), with the company's former executives becoming commissioners. The BPC was wound up in 1981 with Banaba mined out and almost completely depopulated while Nauru, independent since 1968, had taken over its own phosphate mining. The origins of many of these developments can be traced to the PIC and PPC. Quantity: 15 microfilm reel(s). Finding Aids: Inventory available.

Date: 1897-1919

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-0498

Description: Newspaper clippings, official printed documents and typescripts on the Pacific phosphate industry. Quantity: 1 microfilm reel(s). Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB

Date: 1903-1911

From: Australian Joint Copying Project : Miscellaneous Series microfilm

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-20-1643

Description: Quantity: 1 microfilm reel(s).

Date: 1900-1921

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-1206

Description: Comprise correspondence from the Sydney and Melbourne offices to and from Ocean and Nauru Islands. Source of title - Supplied by Library Quantity: 26 microfilm reel(s). Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, 2004

Date: 1800 - 1899

By: Pacific Islands Company

Reference: Eph-B-SHIP-1800s

Description: Includes: Undated: Invoice of ....... Kauri gum shipped per S.S. ... to ..... for account and risk of Messrs .... by the undersigned [Black invoice sheet. 1800s? Ex Webster Collection] 1803: Great Britain. Assistant Registrar General of Shipping :An account of the number of ships, their tonnage and men, that entered inwards and cleared outwards in Great Britain, to or from the Greenland and the Southern whale fisheries, ... [Ex Webster Collection, no. 1480] 1863: P Henderson & Co's Line of packets to New Zealand, to sail early in March from Glasgow to Dunedin, Otago, N.Z. ... the splendid Clyde-built iron clipper ship "Wave Queen"... 27 January 1863 [Photographic copy from unknown publication. Ex Webster Collection no. 2566/3] Patrick Henderson Shipping Company: Patrick Henderson & Co.'s regular line of packet ships to New Zealand, 27 West George Street, Glasgow, 3 Feby 1863. In reply to your letter of ... we beg to inform you that we intend to despatch the "Wave Queen", 850 tons register ... from Glasgow for Otago NZ about the beginning of March 1863 ... [1863. Ex Webster Collection, no. 2566/3] 1883: Ship "Oxford" (Anchored), Penarth Roads, Cardiff, 14 February 1883. [Note of thanks accompanying monetary gift to crew from passengers] ca 1897?: Pacific Islands Company Ltd. Notes on Clipperton Island [Single sheet, for the use of ships visiting. ca 1897] 1898: New Zealand Shipping Company :The New Zealand Shipping Company Limited monthly service. Direct line of mail steamers between London and New Zealand ... taking passengers for all New Zealand ports. [1898] Quantity: 1 folder(s). Physical Description: Offset prints, letterpress, on pamphlets, booklets and fliers, sizes varying up to 330 mm.

Date: 1870-1919

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-0480-0492

Description: Diaries kept by an early South Seas trader and important figure in the phosphate industry. Source of title - Transcribed Quantity: 13 microfilm reel(s). Finding Aids: Invnetory available. Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, ca 1980

Date: 1892-1904

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-1174

Description: Presscopy letter books of outward letters from George C Ellis, A F Ellis, H E Denson and J T Arundel of the Australian Office of J T Arundel and Company and the Pacific Islands Company Ltd to business associates, mainly in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. The correspondence documents the early corporate history that led to the environmental devastation of both islands, the diaspora of Banabans to Rabi in Fiji and eslewhere, and the near-bankruptcy of Nauru. Source of title - Transcribed Relationship complexity - See also Micro-MS-Coll-08-1175 and 1176 for further papers of the Pacific Islands Company, and Micro-MS-Coll-08-0480-0495, 0497-0498 for diarie, correspondence and further papers of J T Arundel and A F Ellis. Arrangement: Some books indexed by subject and addressee. All arranged chronologically. John T Arundel, son of a LMS official, worked for a London firm with interests in guano, which took him into the Pacific. In 1892 Arundel formed his own company, J T Arundel and Company, which acquired concessions enabling it to make and market copra and phosphate. The Pacific Islands Company was formed in 1897 and in 1898 took over the assets of Henderson & McFarlane Ltd in the Mid-Pacific. Lord Stanmore (Sir Arthur Gordon, formerly Governor of Fiji and High Commissioner of the Western Pacific) was chairman of the PIC, with Arundel as its vice-chairman. In 1902 the PIC divested itself of non-phosphate interests and merged with the Jaluit Gesellschaft of Hamburg to form the Pacific Phosphate Company Ltd, with exclusive rights to the exploitation of phosphate in Banaba and Nauru. Quantity: 8 microfilm reel(s). Finding Aids: Inventory avilable. Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, 2002

Date: 1897-1909

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-1176

Description: Correspondence from files held in the Australian Office of the companies. Source of title - Transcribed Quantity: 22 microfilm reel(s). Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, 2003

Date: 1840-1914

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-1205

Description: Comprise legal papers, agreements, reports, notes on islands, some dating back to 1840, and press cuttings relating to the Company. Also, articles of association, leases on islands, papers re Jaluit Gesellschaft Nauru concession, account of the expedition of the `Rob Roy' to the Solomon Islands, 1900. Source of title - Supplied by Library Quantity: 5 microfilm reel(s). Finding Aids: Detailed inventory available. Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, 2004

Date: 1865-1909

From: Pacific Manuscripts Bureau : Records of the Pacific Area

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-08-0493-0495

Description: Correpondence, cashbooks and other papers, kept by a leading figure in the Pacific phosphate industry. Source of title - Supplied Relationship complexity - See also Micro-MS-Coll-08-0498 Quantity: 3 microfilm reel(s). Provenance: Donor/Lender/Vendor - Purchase, PMB, ca 1990

Date: 1902-1929

From: Australian Joint Copying Project : Miscellaneous Series microfilm

Reference: Micro-MS-Coll-20-1646

Description: Quantity: 1 microfilm reel(s).