His family led a lower-middle-class existence in South London. His father was captain of a merchant ship and spent his fifty-year career mainly at sea; Susannah, a strong evangelical, was the predominant presence in her son's childhood, except during two long voyages that the boy took with his father. From an early age Ellis was a rather solitary, bookish child. At the age of seven his parents decided that he should accompany his father on a voyage around the world, and on his return home he returned to school. He was eventually sent to a boarding school, The Poplars at Mitcham, but he returned home every weekend because his mother wished to oversee his religious instruction.
In 1875 he accompanied his father on a second trip around the world.
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