Ortac

Ortac is a small uninhabited islet about 5 kilometres (3.1 miles) west of the coast of Alderney near to the islet of Burhou. It measures roughly 50 by 70 metres (164.0 by 229.7 feet), and rises 24 metres (78.7 feet) above the sea level.

A.H. Ewen surmised that the rock's name meant "large rock at the edge" from the Norman language or (edge) + etac (stack). Alexander Deschamps said that the French formerly knew it as "the Eagle's Nest".

Ortac and Alderney, along with the Casquets, are part of the same sandstone ridge.

Paul Naftel, a Guernsey artist, sketched it, and the drawing appeared in Ansted & Latham's book, The Channel Islands (1862). The writers themselves commented -

If the sea bottom, which is in very few parts as much as 20 fathoms deep, were elevated 120 feet (37 m), the island of Alderney, the Burhou and Ortac group, and the Casquets would be connected by low land, and form a narrow island around 12 miles (19 km) long.

The 1906 book, The Channel Pilot states –

Between Ortac, Verte Tête and Burhou Island, are scattered many dangerous rocks, and ledges among which the streams run with great velocity.

It also supposedly contains a cave known as "the Oven".

Victor Hugo, who lived on Guernsey, and who wrote much about the Channel Islands says in his novel, The Laughing Man (L'Homme qui Rit):

...on the port bow arose, standing stark, cut out on the background of mist, a tall opaque mass, vertical, right-angled, a tower of the abyss. It was the Ortac rock. The Ortac, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves... An immovable cliff, it plunges its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless serpentine coils of the sea. At night it stands an enormous block, resting on the folds of a huge black sheet. In time of storm it awaits the stroke of the axe which is 'the thunderclap'...

To be wrecked on the Casquets is to be cut into ribbons; to strike on the Ortac is to be crushed into powder... On a straight frontage, such of that of the Ortac, neither the wave nor the cannon ball can ricochet... if the wave carries the vessel on the rock she breaks on it, and is lost...

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Wikipedia