[6] Inaccessible Island was discovered in January 1656 during a voyage by the Nachtglas ("the night glass"), a Dutch ship under the command of Jan Jakobszoon,[7] 146 years after Tristan da Cunha was first sighted by Portuguese sailors.

One is that on maps the newly found island was referred to as "inaccessible" because the Dutch crew who landed were not able to reach its interior.

[9][10] In 1803, US sailors led by Amasa Delano made landfall on the island during a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope.

In 1938, the Norwegian Scientific Expedition to Tristan da Cunha spent three weeks on the island, during which time they managed to gain access to the plateau and extensively catalogued plants, birds, and rocks.

[13] In 1997, Inaccessible Island's territorial waters out to 22 km (14 mi) were declared a nature reserve under the Tristan da Cunha Conservation Ordinance of 1976.

Currently, only guides from Tristan are allowed to take visiting cruise ships to Inaccessible; most trips to the island are now made at the request of expatriates.

Captain Alexander Grieg intended to sail past Saint Helena, but adverse currents carried her to Tristan da Cunha.

The remainder were then brought to Tristan, where the brig Nerina arrived about two months later and took most to Cape Town, South Africa.

[citation needed] When Corporal William Glass and his family became the first settlers at Tristan da Cunha in 1816, goats and pigs were brought to Inaccessible Island to serve as a source of food.

[17][18][19] The island has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International as a breeding site for seabirds and its endemic landbirds.