DISCOVERY & SETTLEMENT

The island group is named after the coconut (Cocos nucifera) which grew in profusion. Captain William Keeling is believed to have been the first European to sight the islands in 1609 on his return from Bantam, on behalf of the East India Company, though there is no record of the sighting. The Islands are not shown in the 1606 edition of Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum but do appear in Blaeu's appendix to the third edition produced about 1631. They are recorded with the name Cocos Eylanden in a manuscript map drawn by Hessel Gerritsz in 1622 and on Dudley's Arcano del Mare (1646) on which it says that they were discovered by the English.

On a Dutch chart produced in Amsterdam in 1659 they were called the Cocos Islands; though around this time they were also known as the Triangular Islands. The English hydrographer, Thornton, used the name Keeling Island in his Oriental Navigation of 1703. Captain Ekeberg from Sweden visited North Keeling in 1740. In his sailing directory compiled in 1805, British hydrographer, James Horsburgh, called them the Cocos-Keeling Islands and named one of the islands after himself. After settlement the early inhabitants called them the Borneo Coral Reefs after the supply vessel the Borneo, owned by John & Joseph Hare & Co and captained by John Clunies-Ross. They were also know as the Keeling-Cocos Islands. However, in 1955 they officially became the Cocos (Keeling) Islands.

Despite knowledge of the islands for over 200 years it was not until the early nineteenth century that they were settled and an interest was taken in them because of their location on a trade route from Europe to the Far East. The first settlement was accidental! Captain Le Cour and the crew of the brig Mauritius lived on Direction Island for several weeks after their ship was wrecked on the reef. Captain Driscoll in the Lonarch went ashore on 24th November 1825, shortly after they were rescued, and noted the wreck. Shortly thereafter, on 6th December 1825, Captain John Clunies-Ross, a Scottish trader sailing the Borneo for Alexander Hare's company, made a brief landing on the islands. During his visit he sounded the main channel, cleared on area on Horsburgh and Direction Islands and planted vegetables and cereals. In the following year Alexander Hare arrived in the Hippomenes with an entourage of men and women to settle the islands.