Edward Ellice (merchant) illustrated diary of a journey to the islands of Rona and Skye. Katherine was an amateur artist and diarist. His brother General Robert Ellice married Eliza Courtney; one of their grandsons became his son's heir in 1880. The Ellice Islands, formerly part of the colony of Gilbert and Ellice Islands and now the independent nation of Tuvalu, were named after him. The Rural Municipality of Ellice in Manitoba, Fort Ellice, and Ellice Avenue in Winnipeg are named after him. Edward Ellice (merchant) Edward Ellice the Elder (27 September 1783 – 17 September 1863), known in his time as the "Bear",
Geology of the Pacific Ocean Plate in the north, the Cocos Plate off today's Central America, and the Nazca and Phoenix Plates in the southern Pacific. Charles Darwin had proposed a theory of the slow subsidence of the ocean floor based on his studies of Pacific oceanic islands, seamounts (underwater volcanoes) and guyots (flat-topped seamounts). His observations have been verified and expanded in the development of plate tectonic theory. The tectonic plates continue to move today. The slowest ridge spreading rate is across the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean which separates at less than 2.5 cm/yr while the fastest, across the East Pacific Rise