‘The last duty of an officer’: Lieutenant de vaisseau Joseph-René Bellot, 1826–1853, in the Franklin Search

Abstract

ABSTRACTLieutenant de vaisseau Joseph René Bellot, (1826–1853) participated, as second-in command, in Lady Franklin's private expedition in search of her missing husband on board Prince Albert, under the command of Captain William Kennedy in 1851–1852. Having wintered at Batty Bay on the east coast of Somerset Island, Kennedy and Bellot sledged south in the spring of 1852, to Bellot Strait, which they discovered. Having passed through the strait, they crossed Peel Sound, and continued west across Prince of Wales Island to Ommanney Bay, then back across Prince of Wales Island, north to Cape Walker, and back to Batty Bay via the north coast of Somerset Island and Prince Leopold Harbour. They discovered no trace of the missing Franklin expedition. In 1853 Bellot again volunteered to go to the Arctic, this time as supernumerary on board the supply ship Phoenix, Captain Edward Inglefield. From Beechey Island, Bellot volunteered to carry dispatches north up Wellington Channel to Captain Sir Edward Belcher who was in that vicinity. Having been driven out of sea on an ice-floe, Bellot disappeared during a gale, and it is assumed that he was blown off the ice into the water and was drowned. Memorials to Bellot may be found on Beechey Island, at Greenwich, England and at Rochefort, France, but probably the most enduring memorial to him is the name ‘Bellot Strait’, applied by Kennedy to the narrow strait between Somerset Island and Boothia Peninsula which represents an integral component of one variant of the northwest passage.