The coast of the bay is entirely within two provinces, María Trinidad Sánchez in the west, and Samaná in the south.
"[3] "Samana Bay lies at the east end of the Island, between Capes Samana and Raphael, the former point being the extremity of an Island of the same name, facing the north side of the Bay and divided from the Hispaniola by a narrow creek; Samana Bay is sixty miles in length, and about ten wide.
"A Spaniard wrote from S. Domingo in 1635 to complain of an English buccaneer settlement at Samana (on the north coast of Hispaniola, near the Mona Passage), where they grew tobacco, and preyed on the ships sailing from Cartagena and S. Domingo for Spain.
To the westward lay a shelving beach; the big rollers here broke far out and ran in creamy white up to the water's edge with diminishing force, but to the eastward the shore line rose in a line of tree-covered hills standing bluffy with their feet in blue water; the rollers burst against them in sheets of spray that climbed far up the cliffs before falling back in a smother of white.
According to the charts the peninsula was no more than ten miles wide, behind them, round Samana Point, lay Samana Bay, opening into the Mona Passage and a most convenient anchorage for privateers and small ships of war which could lie there, under the protection of the fort of the Samana peninsula, ready to slip out and harass the West Indian convoys making use of the Mona Passage" Lieutenant Hornblower by C.S.