 Rockall is probably best known as a
BBC weather area in the shipping forecasts. Here is a little more information on
this remote islet far to the west of Scotland.
The ownership of Rockall is disputed. You may wonder
why, but it is to do with the oil riches which may be under the
Rockall Shelf which surrounds it.
|
Location
|
|
57 deg 36N, 13 deg 41W
230 miles west of Manish
Point, North Uist, Scotland.
Rockall is the most isolated part of the British
Isles.
|
Size
|
|
70 feet high. 
80 feet by 100 feet wide.
Rockall has one very small ridge known as Hall's Ledge.
Nearby is Hasselwood Rock which is just visible
above sea level in calm conditions.
|
Geology
|
|
 The rocks of Rockall are from the Tertiary era and
are approximately 40 million years old. Rockall is composed of a soda-rich
variety of granite. One dark variety of this rock has been named Rockallite.
|
| First Landing
and Ownership
|
|
 The earliest recorded landing was in 1810
but the ownership of Rockall has been disputed for
centuries with the Irish Republic, Denmark and Iceland making claims for it.
It
was officially annexed by Britain in September 1955 when a landing was made by
helicopter from the navy vessel HMS Vidal. It became part of the United Kingdom
in February 1972 when the Isle of Rockall Act was passed in the UK parliament.
 In the 1980s, John Ridgeway, the Atlantic rower
actually lived on the islet for nearly a month to confirm British ownership. It
goes without saying that there are no permanent human inhabitants!
Also, Tom
McClean briefly "lived" on Hall's Ledge and operated an amateur radio
station.
In the summer of 1997 it was briefly occupied by
Greenpeace activists who declared it the state of Waveland. They replaced the
navigational beacon placed there by the UK government with a solar powered
replacement.
|
|
Books and articles on Rockall
|
|
Book name
|
Author
|
Publisher/date
|
Comments
|
|
|
|
Rockall: the islet of birds
|
James
Fisher
|
Picture
Post
March 1946 |
|
|
|
|
Rockall
|
James
Fisher
|
Geofrey Bles 1956
|
This is the definitive
work on Rockall, now hard to find. |
|
|
|
Rockall: Its Past and Future
A full electronic copy of the book is available at the bottom of this page as a .pdf attachment. By
kind permission of the publishers. See http://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp/Home/rockall/rockpf.pdf
|
James A.McIntosh
|
Hugh MacDonald Ltd,
Oban,
Scotland
1946 |
Small 32 page
|
|
|
|
The
Scottish Islands |
Hamish
Haswell-
Smith |
Canongate
1996
ISBN 0 86241 579
9 |
Good book on all the Scottish
islands.
|
|
|
|
The Railways of Rockall
(that's
what it says!) |
F.W. Hampson & F.William
|
High Heaton. F.W. Hampson. 1990
ISBN: 0951669702
|
Your guess is as good as mine
on this one!
Hard to get a railway on THIS rock!
|
|
|
|
The Master
An Adventure Story
(a novel)
|
T. H. White
|
Unknown
|
Features two children who become stranded on Rockall where a mysterious sage is building a machine to take
over the world. |
|
Value
|
|
Rockall sits on potentially vast oil reserves - one
reason for the interest in its ownership in recent years. Rockall is also famous
as a sea area in the BBC weather forecasts.
|
|
Greenpeace
|
|
The
image on the right was taken during the Greenpeace occupation
in 1997. It shows a razorbill on Hall's Ledge. |
|
|
|
Wildlife
|
|
Being really just a rocky crag surrounded by miles
of ocean the wildlife is, to put things kindly, in short supply! There are
no trees or bushes on the rock - just algae, seaweeds and one black litchen. Only 6 species of animal have been recorded
on Rockall. I'm not sure if any bird has successfully bred on
the islet. The only possible nesting area is on Hall's Ledge, a narrow ledge
high up on the side of Rockall which frequently suffers the full force of
Atlantic gales and waves.
|
|
|
|
Animal
Type
|
Latin
Name |
|
Birds seen on or around Rockall
|
|
|
|
A trematode |
|
|
Little tern
|
Leach's petrel |
Gannet |
|
|
|
The rough periwinkle |
|
|
Razorbill
|
Storm-petrel |
Dunlin |
|
|
|
A common amphipod |
Littorina rudis |
|
Puffin
|
Manx shearwater |
Arctic skua |
|
|
|
An orange rotifer |
Hyale nilssoni |
|
Guillemot
|
Tristan great shearwater |
Great skua |
|
|
|
A common mite |
Hyadesia fusca |
|
Herring-gull
|
Sooty shearwater |
Pomarine skua |
|
|
|
A common mite |
Ameronothrus |
|
Fulmar
|
Lesser black-backed gull |
Long-tailed skua |
|
|
|
E-mail me at:
rogerlapthorn@gmail.com
|
Kittewake
|
Great black-backed gull |
White wagtail |
|
|
|
|
Blackheaded gull |
Great auk (extinct) |
|
|
|
|
