Who owns Rockall? The isolated Atlantic outcrop has generated fierce nationalist rivalries since the first Royal Navy expedition scrambled ashore in 1810.

Key Foreign Office files on its legal status dating back to the early 1970s remain closed to researchers for up to 50 years on the grounds of "prejudice to international relations" – a clear sign of the sensitivities still swirling about.

Possession of Rockall, 240 miles (386km) west of the Scottish mainland, was for many decades deemed imperative in order to generate claims to the vast tracts of surrounding fisheries and the oil-rich Atlantic seabed.

The Royal Navy annexed the rock in 1955 by hoisting the union flag and cementing a brass plaque on its storm-washed summit. The 1972 Island of Rockall Act, passed by parliament, formally declared it to be part of Inverness-shire, even though the nearest permanently inhabited settlement is 228 miles away on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides.

British imperial ambitions were set back, however, by international ratification of the UN convention on the law of the sea (Unclos) in 1982, which states: "Rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life of their own shall have no exclusive economic zone or continental shelf."

That decision meant ownership of Rockall, which is the eroded rump of an extinct volcano, would no longer be decisive in the international, diplomatic battle for control of the seabed below.

The rules of Unclos stipulate that coastal states can register claims to the seabed up to 350 nautical miles offshore. Claims are ratified by the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf which sits in New York.

The UK made its formal submission for the Hatton/Rockall area in 2009, using the deserted island of St Kilda, inhabited until 1930, as its baseline.

Rockall is 167 nautical miles to the west of St Kilda.

The UK, however, is not the only state eager to gain control of the Hatton/Rockall basin. Ireland, Iceland and Denmark (on behalf of the Faroes) have also lodged overlapping claims.

Consequently, there have been quadripartite talks shuffling between London, Dublin, Reykjavik and Copenhagen for years in an attempt to agree common underwater borders that would allow exploration to start.

Despite the tortuous negotiations, Rockall retains a symbolic attraction for adventurers. Tom McClean, an SAS veteran, endured 40 days roped to the outcrop in 1985 in order to assert the UK's claim. In 1997, Greenpeace protesters lasted for 42 days as part of a protest against oil exploration.

If the Rockall adventurer Nick Hancock survives for 60 days would that prove that Rockall, despite everything that has been agreed by UN officials and British diplomats, is capable of sustaining human habitation?

Underwater reserves of oil, gas and minerals are increasingly being eyed by rival nations eager to boost their reserves. Rockall is not the only island at the centre of an international, political dispute. The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are the focus of rival claims involving China, the Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. Another group of islands in the South China Sea that generates nationalist fervour is the Paracel archipelago where China, Taiwan and Vietnam vie for control.

As for Rockall, it has the distinction of having inspired a rousing republican anthem, Rock on Rockall, by the Irish group the Wolfe Tones.

The chorus goes: "Oh rock on Rockall, you'll never fall to Britain's greedy hands/Or you'll meet the same resistance that you did in many lands/May the seagulls rise and pluck your eyes and the water crush your shell/And the natural gas will burn your ass and blow you all to hell."

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: "The UK has agreed maritime boundaries with the Irish to the south and Denmark, on behalf of the Faroe Islands, to the north.

"Informal negotiations between the four parties as to how to delimit the area subject to counter-claims have been ongoing for some years."