[4] In March 1778, Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy landed on Bligh Island and named the inlet "King George's Sound".

When the trader Charles Barkley arrived at Nootka in the summer of 1787, he was surprised to find John Mackay who, over the year, had learned the Nuu-chah-nulth's language and customs, adapted himself to their ways, and married a young native girl.

[10] In 1789 Spain sent Sub-Lieutenant Esteban José Martinez, commanding Princesa and San Carlos, to enforce Spanish sovereignty and defend its claims.

The first Nootka Convention (1790) gave both countries the right to settle along the Pacific coasts, interrupting the Spanish monopoly for the first time in over two centuries.

The French Bourbon king Louis XVI wanted to back Spain against Great Britain, but his right to enter France into an alliance on his own prerogative was disputed by the National Assembly.

The Scottish political reformer Thomas Muir had been banished to Port Jackson in Botany Bay in Australia for 14 years for the crime of sedition in 1793.

After a highly adventurous voyage across the as yet largely uncharted Pacific Ocean to Vancouver Island, Otter finally dropped anchor in Nootka Sound on 22 June 1796.

In conversation with José Tovar, the piloto (master) of Sutil, a Spanish vessel at anchor in the Nootka Sound, Muir learned to his dismay of the presence in neighbouring waters of HMS Providence, the British sloop-of-war under William Robert Broughton.

This vessel had visited Port Jackson in Australia shortly before Muir’s escape and, since Broughton had almost certainly become acquainted with the captain or members of the crew, his life was now in real danger.

The chronicles of Pierre François Péron describe Muir's escape from Australia and the voyage across the Pacific to Nootka Sound, and then as far as Monterey, California.

[11][13] The climate of the land around the bay is oceanic (Cfb), but with a wet fall, winter, and spring season and a strong dry-summer trend.

In 2001, a two-year-old male orca, later named Luna, was seen alone in Nootka Sound as far inland as the marina at Gold River, British Columbia.

[15] Presumed to be an orphan separated from his pod, Luna became a local and international celebrity as a result of his playful and curious behaviour towards tug boats and recreational watercraft on Nootka Sound, and with people, including young children, on the Gold River dock.