[3] It lies about 60 kilometres (37 mi) southwest of Montagu Island[4] and is separated from Southern Thule by Forsters Passage.

In some places the coast is formed by sandy or bouldery beaches, but most of Bristol Island is surrounded by ice cliffs.

[16] Of these Mount Darnley is the highest point of Bristol Island, reaching an elevation of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) above sea level.

[10] Pyroclastic cones and three overlapping vents form Mount Sourabaya, the active centre of Bristol Island.

[11] Grindle Rock (Spanish: Roca Cerretti) has a height of 213 metres (700 ft) and lies 0.7 nautical miles (1.3 km) west of the island.

[21] The submarine portion of Bristol Island has an irregular shape, especially in the north and west where it extends to some distance from the coastline.

[5] A shallow shelf of less than 180 metres (590 ft) depth surrounds the island especially in the west, where it forms Freezland Bank.

Freezland Rock consists of andesite[27] which – unlike the potassium-poor tholeiites of the main island[28] – defines a calc-alkaline suite.

[30] The three rocks lying west of the island, Grindle, Wilson, and Freezland, were all first discovered by the expedition of British Captain James Cook in 1775.

[12] Although the island was discovered by a British expedition under James Cook in 1775, Harker Point was unnamed until it was surveyed in 1930 by a team on the staff of the Discovery Committee.

[27] It, the rocks at Turmoil Point and the stacks between them may be part of an older, now eroded volcano[8] made up by alternating dykes, lava flows and tuffs.

[18] The bulk of Bristol Island was probably built by emissions from the Sourabaya, Darnley and Havfruen centres and includes lava flows that form some of the capes,[33] although bathymetric data imply that it mostly pre-dates the Freezland Rock volcano.

[39] A sulfate anomaly in the EPICA ice core from Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica, has been attributed to the 1956 eruption.

[44] Temperature anomalies indicative of fumaroles are visible from satellites[45] and are centered on the crater of Mount Sourabaya.

[36] Algae and lichens grow where there is exposed rock,[48] but unlike on many other South Sandwich Islands no vegetation is associated with volcanically heated ground.

Penguins form colonies on Bristol Island, including one with thousands of individuals on Freezland Rock,[50] and seabirds like Antarctic fulmars[51] and imperial shags also breed on Bristol,[52] although their populations are smaller here than on the other South Sandwich Islands[53] and they may be impacted by volcanic activity.