See also Mfm PMB 1174 and Mfm PMB 1176.

"PMB-National Archives of Australia joint project, 2000-2001."

Correspondence from/to J T Arundel, G Ellis, 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 London Head Office. General correspondence, shipping details, telegrams, machinery details, financial affairs. Arranged alphabetically, A-Z, primarily by addressee. See reel list for further details. See also PMB 1174 & 1176, J T Arundel & Pacific Phosphate Co, and PMB 480-495, 497-498, for diaries, correspondence and further papers of J T Arundel and A F Ellis.

The first Chairman of the PIC was Lord Stanmore (Sir Arthur Gordon), with John Arundel (1841-1919) its vice-Chairman. In 1900 Albert Ellis (1869-1951), a company employee, travelled to Banaba (Ocean Island) and confirmed that the island contained huge deposits of phosphate. Ellis secured mining rights from island leaders while the PIC was granted an imperial mining license, completed by British annexation of Banaba. The company secured exclusive mining rights for 999 years in return for an annual payment of L.50 to the Banaban people. Within a few years the company was making up to L.125,000 per annum. This provoked a scandal, and the license was modified to provide for a trust fund and compensation for environmental damage; the later commitment was never fulfilled.

So profitable was Banaban mining that the PIC sold all of its other non-phosphate interests in the Pacific. In 1902 it formed the Pacific Phosphate Company Limited (PPC) in collaboration with Jaluit Gessellschaft of Hamburg, giving it mining rights on German Nauru. Following World War I the PPC was replaced by the British Phosphate Commissioners (BPC) with many of the company's former executives, including Ellis, rolling over their managerial positions to become the new commissioners. The BPC was not dissolved until 1981 by which time Ocean Island had been mined out and almost completely depopulated while Nauru, independent since 1968, had assumed direct responsibility for phosphate mining. The origins of many of these developments can be traced to the PIC and PPC whose correspondence is available here.

PMB ; 1175

Pacific Phosphate Co. Ltd. > Records and correspondence.

Pacific Islands Co. Ltd. > Records and correspondence.

Phosphate mines and mining > Pacific Area.

Phosphate industry > Oceania.

Australian National University. Pacific Manuscripts Bureau.

Pacific Phosphate Co. Ltd.