A settlement was established by the Spaniards, and a small boat (known in the accounts as "the brigantine") was built to survey and chart the surrounding sea and islands.

These local explorations led by maestre de campo Pedro Ortega Valencia and Alférez Hernando Enríquez resulted in the "discoveries" of the islands of Malaita, Guadalcanal, Savo, Vangunu, Choiseul, Makira, Ulawa, Malaupaina, Malaulalo, Ali'ite, and Ugi Island.

[4] Having found no gold and little food, and beset by attacks and sickness, the Spanish colonists shifted their colony to the site of today's Honiara on Guadalcanal, and the settlement on Santa Isabel was abandoned.

Santa Isabel islanders suffered attacks from blackbirding in the nineteenth century (the often-brutal recruitment or kidnapping of labourers for the sugar plantations in Queensland and Fiji).

During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Navy established a seaplane base at Rekata Bay on the northeast coast.