[3]: 181  The island is no more than 400,000 years old and was formed by magma that was a simple binary mixture between upper mantle and the Amsterdam-Saint Paul hotspot plume.

The island was mapped, described in detail and recorded in paintings by members of the crew of the nau São Paulo, among them Father Manuel Álvares and the chemist Henrique Dias.

The São Paulo, which also carried women and had sailed from Europe and stopped in Brazil, would be the subject of a dramatic and moving story of survival after it sank south of Sumatra.

George William Robinson, an American sealer, was left on the island to hunt seals, and stayed there for 23 months until the General Gates returned for him in March 1821.

The decree giving the islands St Paul and Amsterdam in possession of Mieroslawski is located in Archives Maritimes in Paris.

[9] The first good map of the island was not drawn up until 1857, when the Austrian frigate Novara landed a team which studied the flora, fauna, and geology from November to December.

A short, impressionistic account of the two French residents encountered by the shipwrecked crew appears in Judith Schalansky's Atlas of Remote Islands (2010).

[13] In September 1874, a French astronomical mission conveyed by the sailing ship La Dive spent just over three months on Saint-Paul to observe the transit of Venus; geologist Charles Vélain took the opportunity to make a significant geological survey of the island.

In 1889, Charles Lightoller, who was later to become famous as the Second Officer of the RMS Titanic, whose sinking he survived, was shipwrecked here for eighty eight days when the sailing barque Holt Hill ran aground.

In 1928, the Compagnie Générale des Îles Kerguelen recruited René Bossière and several Bretons and Madagascans to establish a spiny lobster cannery on Saint-Paul, "La Langouste Française".

The message was relayed to the Navy and the French consul in San Francisco, while 12-year-old Neil Taylor, an amateur radio operator in California, made contact with the stranded crew and assured them that help was on the way.

It was also the breeding site for an endemic flightless duck & several kinds of petrel before the introduction of exotic predators and herbivores, including black rats, house mice, European rabbits, pigs and goats during the 19th century or earlier.

[18] The island, with the adjacent islet of Quille Rock, has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports several breeding seabirds.