Rockall (in old maps Rocol, Rochol, &c.), on a deeply covered sandbank in the Atlantic 50 miles long and 25 broad, in 57° 36' N. lat., 13° 42' W. long., 160 miles W. of St Kilda, 290 from the nearest point of the Scottish mainland, and 260 from the north of Ireland. It is an isolated conical granitic rock on stratified masses, rising 70 feet above the sea, and about 100 yards in circumference. At a distance it looks like a ship in full sail, the upper part being white with the dung of sea-fowl, and the lower part dark stone. This curious peak is further from a mainland than any other rock or islet of like size in any part of the world. Martin, in his St Kilda (1698), mentions that a crew of Frenchmen and Spaniards, shipwrecked at Rockall in 1686, escaped in their pinnace to St Kilda. The first landing known was in 1810. Vessels come hither for cod-fishing from Scotland and from Grimsby.
See the account of a scientific expedition hither in 1896 in an article by Mr Miller Christy in the Royal Scottish Geographical Magazine for 1898.