Journal d'un Voyage aux Mers Polaires Execute a la Recherche de Sir John Franklin en 1851 et 1852
Author: Joseph Rene Bellot (1826-1853)
Year: 1854
Publisher: Perrotin, Libraire-Editeur
Place: Paris
Description:
lvi+414+[1] pages with frontispiece portrait, facsimile letter and folding map. Octavo (8 1/2" x 5") bound in half leather over marbled boards with red leather gilt spine label. (Arctic Bibliography, 1304) First edition.
In June 1844 Bellot embarked as naval cadet on the corvette Berceau for a voyage to the Indian Ocean. During this tour of service he was seriously wounded in a joint Anglo-French naval strike against the port of Tamatave in Madagascar on 15 June 1845, and for his part in this action he was nominated a knight of the Legion of Honour on 2 Dec. 1845. After a brief service aboard the frigate Belle-Poule in 1846, Bellot returned to France and was promoted sub-lieutenant on 1 Nov. 1847. Following a two-year tour of duty aboard the corvette Triomphante he returned to Rochefort on 25 Aug. 1850.
During a period of inactivity following his return to France, Bellot developed an interest in the search for Sir John Franklin, lost in the Arctic since 1845. Until 1850 the search efforts had been sustained exclusively by the English-speaking world and Bellot felt that the concern of the French, and of seamen everywhere, should also be demonstrated. In mid March 1851 he wrote letters to Lady Franklin, who was then organizing her second private search expedition. Bellot impressed Lady Franklin at once and she confirmed his appointment after their first interview. William Kennedy commander of the expedition, began his sledging operations on 5 Jan. 1852. Bellot accompanied him on a preliminary outing to Fury Beach, and they were again together on the expedition’s main sledge journey, leaving on 25 February. This trek of 1,100 miles was one of the longest accomplished during the Franklin search. They travelled south to Brentford Bay, where they discovered Bellot Strait, separating Somerset Island from Boothia Peninsula. Bellot and Kennedy continued west and crossed Prince of Wales Island before making their way back to Peel Sound and heading north to Cape Walker. Returning to the Prince Albert, they followed the north and east coasts of Somerset Island back to Batty Bay, arriving on 30 May. This journey, particularly the discovery of Bellot Strait which revealed the northernmost point of the American continent, was the highlight of the expedition. On 6 August they set sail for Great Britain.
Bellot sent Lady Franklin a request, on 1 April 1853, to join Captain Edward Augustus Inglefield’s Phoenix expedition and upon her recommendation was accepted by the Admiralty without question. Inglefield was to deliver supplies and dispatches to Sir Edward Belcher's search expedition of five ships, then wintering at various sites in the Arctic. The Phoenix reached one of the ships, the supply vessel North Star, at Beechey Island on 8 Aug. 1853, and four days later Bellot set off on foot with four men to deliver messages to Belcher, then in Wellington Channel. On 17 August Bellot and two of the men drifted away from the shore on an ice floe. They made a shelter for the night and the next morning Bellot went out to examine the ice. One of the men went out to join him, but found only his stick on an adjacent floe; Bellot had apparently fallen between floes and drowned.
Condition:
Wear and some soiling to extremities, large bookplate on front paste-down else a very good copy.
