They are administered by the United Kingdom as part of the overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.

[4] Large amounts of kelp surround the island, which makes it difficult to anchor ships in bad weather.

It was originally named "Gebrooken Eyland" (Broken island) by the Dutch ship the Nachtglas under Jan Jacobszoon in January 1656, who found no safe anchorage; the first landing was not made until 1696 (most likely by Willem de Vlamingh in August of that year).

French captain Pierre d'Etcheverry also visited the island in September 1767, first recording the two nearby islets now named Stoltenhoff and Middle.

[6] In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Dutch and French governments as well as the British East India Company considered taking possession of Nightingale (as well as Tristan and Inaccessible), but decided against it due to lack of landing space.

Captain John Thomas, on an expedition to the South Atlantic, supposedly left a fortune of Spanish doubloons and pieces-of-eight in caves on Nightingale for safekeeping.

The previous conservation workers' sheds were severely damaged during a storm produced by an extratropical cyclone in 2001 that reportedly included winds up to 120 mph.

[8] Before daybreak on 16 March 2011, the Maltese-registered MS Oliva cargo carrier ran aground at Spinners Point on the island's northwestern shore.

As many as 20,000 penguins were threatened, and there was a risk that rats from the ship could make it ashore to eventually prey on the chicks and eggs of native seabirds.

[11] Nightingale Island has no fresh water, so the penguins were transported to Tristan da Cunha for cleaning.

[14] One of the lifeboats from MS Oliva subsequently washed ashore in February 2013 near the Murray Mouth, South Australia.

As with Inaccessible Island, Nightingale also has a breeding colony of northern rockhopper penguins, now an endangered species, with a fraction of the 1950s population remaining.

Up to 15,000 Great Shearwater eggs, several thousand adults and around 50,000 chicks are harvested every year from Nightingale by Tristan Islanders, which is not considered a threat to the species' numerous population.