The bay was discovered by La Pérouse on July 25, 1787 and named after the sponsor of the expedition—the then Secretary of State of the French Navy, the Marquis de Castries.

[citation needed] In 1854, the difficult task of defending Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky when it came under siege from the British and French forces during the Crimean War brought to attention the difficulties of supply and defense of the Kamchatka Peninsula, where a large section of the Russian Pacific Fleet was based.

The British and French did not know that Sakhalin was an island, and spent the later years of the war waiting in vain for the Russian fleet at its southern coast.

During the Russian Civil War, from January 11 to February 27, 1920, De-Kastri was occupied by the 48-man strong White Army detachment of Ivan Vits.

During the 1930s and early 1940s, De-Kastri became the location of a naval outpost to protect against the Japanese, who until the end of World War II possessed the southern half of Sakhalin as Karafuto Prefecture.