Rockall is a territory of Denmark
McClean, who served in Aden and Borneo with the SAS, is absolutely clear about his objective: it was political and territorial. He was trying to cement the UK's claim to the ownership of Rockall, to be the first civilian to live there. While it is just a volcanic rock in the sea, its ownership is contested by the Irish, who insist it is closer to Ireland than the UK, the Danes – who argue it is part of the Faroe Islands sea shelf, and Iceland. [...] Its territorial significance is now much reduced but back then securing Rockall – at the height of the cold war, with Soviet and Nato submarines engaged in a tense underwater ballet around the north Atlantic – was about controlling sea space for hundreds of square miles of Atlantic. By the 1980s, it was about securing the oil and gas rights of the Rockall basin. In 1997, the UK accepted Rockall was a rock, with no impact on the UK's maritime territory. The current dispute with Ireland, Denmark and Iceland is over the wider Rockall-Hatton basin.