Ellis was born in Roma, Queensland; his family moved to Waikato in New Zealand three months later, where he eventually attended the Cambridge District High School.

Ronald Wright, in his book On Fiji Islands, writes: Ellis, on the other hand, must have known very well that he had got the Banabans to give him a license to destroy their country in return for a pittance in overpriced trinkets and third-rate tinned food.

Not satisfied with this, he made so bold as to hoist the Union Jack (without authorisation from Britain) and inform the Banabans that they were now people of England.

The company failed to keep even the minimal obligations to the Banabans that it had allowed itself in the original agreement: food trees disappeared with the land; natives were charged far higher prices than whites at the company store; and distilled water, which Ellis had promised the Banabans in return for the firewood to make it, was sold at such a price that the inhabitants had to continue drinking from caves increasingly polluted by the mining.Following World War I, Nauru became a mandate of Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the countries appointed the British Phosphate Commission to manage the extraction and export of phosphate from Nauru.

Despite efforts to relocate Nauruans due to the environmental destruction instigated by Ellis's discovery of phosphate, Nauru remains their home.