Nikolai Rezanov
Early explorers in the region, including Francis Drake, Sebastián Vizcaíno, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, and George Vancouver, did not discover the bay because of a combination of circumstances: the way the bay is hidden from an ocean approach, storms, and fog. Captain Jonathan Winship is credited with the first recorded entry into Humboldt Bay by sea in June 1806, while employed by the Russian-American Company a major trading company. His party, including Aleut in baidarka to hunt sea otter, were met with hostility by the local Indians. Winship's party named this body of water as "Bay of Resanof", after Nikolai Rezanov, the Chamberlain of the Russian Tsar, and son-in-law of Grigory Shelikhov, who was the founder of the first Russian colony in North America.