The bay is overlooked by Rame Head, a conical hill with the ruins of a 14th-century chapel dedicated to St Michael on top.

West of Captain Blake's Point, long stretches of sand are interspersed with rocky headlands and small bays, many inaccessible at high tide.

A National Trust property at Sharrow Point preserves a small cave excavated by hand in 1874 by a hermit called Lugger, who inscribed verses on the ceiling to relieve his boredom.

[3] A campaign to stop the dumping of dredged silt and sludge (5.3 million tonnes since the 1980s) from the River Tamar and the port of Plymouth has been running for several years.

[5] Whitsand Bay is popular with divers, and in 2004 the former Royal Navy frigate HMS Scylla was scuppered to provide a new underwater reef.

[6] The Scylla was sunk nearby an existing World War II wreck, the Liberty Ship James Eagan Layne.

HMS A7, an early Royal Navy submarine, sank in Whitsand Bay, Cornwall on 16 January 1914 with the loss of her crew whilst carrying out dummy torpedo attacks on Onyx (her tender) and Pygmy.

The paths to the beaches at Sharrow Point, Withnoe, Tregonhawke and Freathy are steep, narrow and slippery and are not suitable for wheelchairs.

The 1859 Royal Commission on the Defence of the United Kingdom identified Whitsand Bay as a weak point in the defences of Plymouth and proposed two Palmerston forts; Polhawn Battery at the eastern end, whose guns would cover the beaches and prevent an amphibious assault, and Fort Tregantle at the western end which prevented an overland approach.

It is currently part of the Defence Estate and is regularly used as a live firing range with red flag warnings and the path down to the beach closed.

When the Stanhope Committee reviewed the country's defences in 1887, it was realised that naval artillery had improved so much that it would have been possible for enemy warships to anchor in the Bay and bombard Plymouth without being threatened by the existing forts.