Rockall

Rockall is a granite islet rising only 17 metres above the open North Atlantic, roughly 301 kilometres west of St Kilda and 700 kilometres south of Iceland. Hasselwood Rock lies 200 metres north, while the skerries of Helen's Reef appear and disappear two kilometres northeast. These few stones are the only emergent points on a broad submarine plateau.

The rock entered maps by 1550 and literature by 1698, but sailors long treated the area as a hazard rather than a place of settlement. In 1686 survivors of a wreck nearby reached St Kilda in a small boat. A Royal Navy party led by Basil Hall made the first documented landing in 1810 or 1811, after precise observations brought the isolated position into navigation.

The brigantine Helen wrecked near the reef in 1824, fixing a name beside the other rocks. Rockall offered no harbour, fresh water or shelter from Atlantic gales; waves can sweep its narrow ledge. Its importance came from the need to locate the hazard, read the current and avoid a lee shore when crossing between Scotland, Iceland and the northern sea routes.

The waters lie beneath the North Atlantic Current, whose warmth and movement feed rich fishing grounds without softening the exposed rock itself. Seabirds rest there when calm weather allows. For ships in the age of sail, Rockall served chiefly as a warning and a fixed mark in an otherwise featureless ocean.