Le Français
Class :
Rigging: 3-masted barque
Hull length: 46 m
Country of origin: France
Year of construction: 1948
Home port: Saint Malo
Le Français was originally a traditional Baltic cargo ship. It was built in 1948 at the Svendborg shipyard in Denmark by J. Ring-Andersen, one of the world's most renowned shipyards, for the Royal Greenland Trading Company.
Launched under the name Kaskelot (sperm whale in Danish), it was used in the 1960s as a support vessel for fishing pilot whales in the Faroe Islands. Twenty years later, she was bought by Square Sail in the UK and converted into a two-masted barque for use in numerous television and film productions, including The Three Musketeers, Shackleton and David Copperfield. She was then chartered for numerous maritime festivals before starting a new life under the French flag in 2018.
Her new name, Le Français, is no coincidence. It is a direct tribute to the three-masted schooner that took part in Charcot's first expedition to Antarctica. Jean-Baptiste Charcot had it built in 1903 in Saint-Malo at the Chantiers et ateliers de construction navale de Saint-Malo to designs by naval architect François Gautier.