There is some dispute as to when exactly this island was discovered. One of the dates that has been named is 1525 when a Portuguese by the name of Gomes de Sequeira travelled from his base at Ternate in the Moluccas. A storm blew up and accidentally carried him to within the vicinity of the island.

Perhaps more certain are the events which took place in relation to the island in later decades. Eighteen months after the settlement of Fort Dundas had been declared a commercial failure by Earl Bathurst, he decided that another settlement should be attempted at Croker Island.

And so it was that the HMS Success, under the command of Captain James Stirling, arrived in 1827 to do this very thing. However, the fact that he could not find suitable anchorage, and the existence of poor water supplies, made him choose a different spot altogether at Raffles Bay, where he established Fort Wellington.

Trepang played quite a considerable role in the island's past. The grave of Tingha Dian can be found on the island. He was very much a Marco Polo figure, having been involved with the trading of trepang to Chinese traders for quite a long period of time. In 1878 two men by the names of E.O. Robinson and T.H. Wingfield set up a trepang station. The latter of the two met a rather unpleasant death at the hands of the local Aborigines, when he had been left on his own whilst Robinson was away for a period.

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