Welcome on the website about the most isolated speck of the rock
in the oceans of the world!
Rockall is an uninhabited speck of a rock with overage of the base about 25 m towering from the stormy Atlantic to the height of 20 m. It is a summit of an extinct volcano, located circa 300 km due west of the nearest land – St Kilda, archipelago laying few tens of kilometres west of the Scottish mainland. It is a monolithic granite mass with no source of fresh water or soil. The only, temporary inhabitants are the seabirds which take advantage of the rock as a refuge and a place for rest. Constantly, it is rehashed by the ocean water; the waves (especially in the winter) reach highest size than the rock itself.
Rockall is one of the summits of a submerged reef called Hellen’s Reef (extinct volcano), the only one always above the sea-level. This submarine mountain projects from the Rockall Bank (submerged area with depth less than 200 m), which is divided both from the European Shelf and Faeroe Shelf. The Rockall Bank is a part of the Rockall Plateau, elevated undersea plateau (depth less than 1500 m), divided from the Europe by the Rockall Through (depth up to 3000 m).
About this website
This website deal with the island of Rockall as comprehensively as possible - You can learn here about the history, etymology, mythology, geology, origin, fauna and flora, position, political context, ... of the island. I really strove to comprise everything, as closely as possible.
The website origined as a High-School Scientific Work (SOÈ). And I decided to put it on the internet, when I did it once. To make an opportunity for anyone to learn about this interesting piece of land:
The work by itself contains 52 pages and is available in the section download. However, on this site I divide it to make it more transparent: the text by itself is in the section full version, which includes the content of the work as well. The attachments of the work (as pictures, maps, graphs, texts) are in the section attachments. They are ordered and numbered same way as in the work, from which I link to them. The shortcuts and the explanatory notes are in the section sources, same as the list of the information sources used in the work.
For a potential reader who does not want to read it so closely, there is the section in brief, where is said the most basic and interesting information. You can review the work or make a remark on it or ask anything You want in the section discussion. Thank You for Your visit!
Annotation of the work
This study was written in order to gather information about Rockall, a speck of rock towering from the stormy Atlantic approximately 450 km due west from the seashore of Scotland. The work deals with the rock’s history on one hand and on the other hand with geological development and characteristics of its surroundings, the submarine Rockall Plateau. Also, it describes the political issue between the four states in the vicinity caused by the discovery of oil under the Plateau.
Introduction of the work
Rockall. Hardly anyone can make an association with this word and hardly anyone even guess what Rockall is. That is the assumption on which I do base this study, written on the purpose of making the issue of Rockall available for anyone, who is interested. There is just few information about Rockall and none is complex. Thus I wanted to make a comprehensive overview of the information about Rockall and put them in one complex study.
This study will be available on the internet both as one file and as a web presentation. I consider this issue really as an interesting one and I think it could be used for example as an educational material for universities.
From the beginning of the work I explain the Rockall basically, to any potential reader who read the following text to know what it is about. After that introduction there is the article itself, which is divided into four sections: Sections 1 and 2 (split just for lucidity) refers to Rockall and his surroundings from the view of physical-geography (for example geology, geomorphology, hydrology, biosphere), section 3 deals with the sociological (cultural) point of view (meanly history), and in section 4 I analyse the determination of the influence (both arose and rising) on the area of the states, it is from the political-economic point of view. At the end there is the summary of the work and then list of sources and supplements.
From here You can go to the top, or for example to the short version or on the whole work.