Not many people know of Rockall and fewer still can pinpoint it on a map. Those that vaguely know of it likely do as the BBC mention it on their shipping forecast several times a day. There is a good reason for that. It's rather in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
The tiny, uninhabitable speck of rock brooding 163 nautical miles (188 miles) off even the outermost Outer Hebrides. It rises to barely 17 metres above sea level, and 31 metres long at its base but only a few dozen centimetres at its summit, it is little more than a granite stub, all that remains of a 52-million-year-old extinct volcano.
Despite being known about since not too long after the Romans, the earliest recorded date of landing on the island is often given as 8 July 1810, when a Royal Navy officer named Basil Hall led a small landing party from the frigate HMS Endymion to the summit. However, research by James Fisher in the log of Endymion and elsewhere, indicates that the actual date for this first landing was on Sunday 8 September 1811.
The landing party left Endymion for the rock by boat. Whilst there, Endymion, which was taking depth measurements around Rockall, lost visual contact with the rock as a haze descended. The ship drifted away, leaving the landing party stranded. The expedition made a brief attempt to return to the ship, but could not find the frigate in the haze, and soon gave up and returned to Rockall. After the haze became a fog, the lookout sent to the top of Rockall spotted the ship again, but it turned away from Rockall before the expedition in their boats reached it. Finally, just before sunset, the frigate was again spotted from the top of Rockall, and the expedition was able to get back on board. The crew of Endymion reported that they had been searching for five or six hours, firing their cannon every ten minutes. Hall related this experience and other adventures in a book entitled Fragment of Voyages and Travels Including Anecdotes of a Naval Life.
The first landing on Rockall
The next landing, in the summer of 1862, was by a Mr Johns of HMS Porcupine whilst the ship was making a survey of the sea bed prior to the laying of a transatlantic telegraph cable. Johns managed to gain foothold on the island, but failed to reach the summit.
In fact the hardest part of climbing to the top of Rockall is actually clambering off a ship in perilous seas and getting a firm hold of the rock. Rockall is known not just for being about the most isolated rock in the world but also as being the location for some of the highest waves ever recorded.
Decades after the the dismantling of the British Empire had got underway, in 1955 Rockall rather bizarrely became the last spot to be claimed as British. Top secret military tests were being held on a nearby Scottish island and there were worries that the Soviet Union might make Rockall a base from which to spy on the missile tests taking place on South Uist.
Royal Marines were dropped by helicopter on to the summit of Rockall and they planted a Union flag.
'In the name of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I hereby take possession of this Island of Rockall,' Lieutenant Commander Desmond Scott said, witnessed by only a few gannets and his crewmates. Some 17 years later, in 1972, the Island of Rockall Act was passed to declare the islet part of Scotland, specifically Inverness-shire.
As it turns out, though the rock itself is almost inherently worthless, it offers the possibility of extensive mineral wealth beneath the ocean floor in addition to lucrative fishing hauls.
Currently an adventurer by the name of Chris Cameron is hoping to break the record for the number of days spent on Rockall and stay there for 60 nights or so. It might not sound like much but it would be some achievement as only 6 people have ever spent a night on Rockall which makes it much quieter even than the moon which has seen 12 people have walked on it; Mount Everest is positively crowded having had over 6,000 reach the summit.
Let's hope for his sake there aren't too many monstrous waves such as this one photographed in 1943.
***Updated hours before this is posted, Chris Cameron was airlifted off Rockall overnight due to increasingly stormy seas***
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