Bishop Rock

The Bishop Rock (Cornish: Men an Epskop) is a skerry off the British coast in the northern Atlantic Ocean known for its lighthouse. It is in the westernmost part of the Isles of Scilly, an archipelago 45 kilometres (24 nautical miles) off the southwestern tip of the Cornish peninsula of Great Britain. The Guinness Book of Records lists it as the world's smallest island with a building on it. The original iron lighthouse was begun in 1847 but was washed away before it could be completed. The present building was completed in 1858 and was first lit on 1 September that year. Before the installation of the helipad, visitors to the lighthouse would rappel from the base (with winches installed at the lamp level and at the base) to boats waiting away from the lighthouse. Bishop Rock is also at the eastern end of the North Atlantic shipping route used by ocean liners in the first half of the 20th century; the western end being the entrance to Lower New York Bay. This was the route that ocean liners took when competing for the transatlantic speed record, known as the Blue Riband.