Dutch captain François Thijssen maps part of future South Australia coast with St Francis/ St Peter islands in 1627

The islands of St Francis and St Peter off the coast of future South Australia are marked on the map of southern coast of New Holland (later Australia) updated after the 1627 voyage by François Thijssen (inset, topright) in a Dutch East Indis ship of the era (inset, bottom right). The islands became part of what Matthew Flinders named the Nuyts Archipelago, achnowledging Thijssen's exploration.

The first recorded European sighting of the South Australian coast was in 1627 when the Dutch ship ‘t Gulden Zeepaerdt (The Golden Seahorse), skippered by Francois Thijssen, ended up too far south when sailing from the Cape of Good Hope for Batavia.

Thijssen's ship reached the southwest tip of Australia, near cape Leeuwin, on January 26, 1627, and continued to sail eastwards, mapping more than 1,500 kilometres of Australia's south coast. Thiessen called it 't Land van Pieter Nuyts (The Land of Peter Nuyts), honouring the highest of the Dutch East India Company, officials aboard his ship.

Thiessen mapped the South Australian coastline around what became Fowlers Bay, a future whaling port named in 1802 by British explorer Matthew Flinders after his first lieutenant on the Investigator, Robert Fowler. As part of confirming the Dutch mapping of the South Australian coast, Flinders named a group of islands, off Eyre Peninsula, the Nuyts Achipelago.

Two of the islands in the Nuyts Archipelago group, St Francis and St Peter, were marked on maps of the south coast of the Hollandia Nova (New Holland) updated after Thiessen’s voyages. The islands were also at the end of Thiessen’s eastern move along the southern coast. Thiessen voyage had disproved the notion that New Holland was linked to Antartica. Thijssen's findings along the southern coast also inspired explorer and geographer Jean-Pierre Pury’s failed attempt to get a Dutch colony started there in 1717-18.

The Nuyts Archipelago mostly granite islands and reefs in the Great Australian Bight to the south of the town of Ceduna on the Eyre Peninsula west coast of South Australia became protected nature areas, valued as breeding sites for Australian sea lions and colonies of short-tailed shearwater. The Isles of St Francis are a group within the archipelago. All islands, with exception of a part of Evans Island, were inside the Nuyts Achipelago Wilderness Protection Area and the Nuyts Archipelago Conservation Park.