Gilbert and Ellice Islands for the Ellice Islands in 1892 and for the Gilbert Islands in 1893. He was succeeded by W. Telfer Campbell in 1896, who established himself on Tarawa Atoll and remained in office until 1908. Telfer Campbell was criticised for his legislative, judicial and administrative management (including forced labour alleged to be exacted from islanders) and an inquiry was held by Arthur Mahaffy, a former colonial official in the Gilberts, resulting in a report in 1909. In 1913 an anonymous correspondent to the "New Age" journal described the maladministration of Telfer Campbell, linked it to criticisms of the Pacific Phosphate Company
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