Entertainment

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 as the Kaskelot (Danish for sperm whale), she was used in the 1960s as a support vessel for the Faroe Islands pilot whale fishery. Twenty years later, she was bought by Square Sail in the UK and transformed into a two-masted barque to be used in numerous TV and film productions, including Les trois Mousquetaires, Beaumarchais, l’insolent, Shackleton and David Copperfield… She was then chartered on a great many maritime festivals before starting a new life under the French flag in 2018.

Her new name, Le Français, is no accident. 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.

In 2005, she took part in the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Trafalgar in Portsmouth.

Her restoration

After more than 50 years of hard work, this magnificent tall ship has undergone a complete refit for her new life. Known as the Kaskelot, the 3-masted barque entered a lengthy shipyard in the UK, with a very precise brief: to restore the ship’s original features by carrying out the work to the highest standards. It was a colossal project, with over 55,000 hours of work devoted to the boat.

All trades were involved on board – naval architect, shipwright, cabinetmaker, rigger, deckhand, master sailmaker, mechanic, welder, hydraulic engineer, electronics engineer, etc. – with the aim of applying the highest construction standards, backed up by international certification agencies.

With this complete restoration, Le Français is today one of the most modern traditional ships, featuring all the latest technology, equipment and navigation instruments. In 2005, she took part in the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Trafalgar in Portsmouth.

This brig was built in Denmark in 1929.

She began her career as a schooner for a Danish evangelical mission. In the 1950s, she became a coaster in the North Sea.

In 1974, she was converted to a brigantine, and in 1988 was acquired by The Square Sail Fleet, which also owns the Earl of Pembroke and the Kaskelot, now known as Le Français. This fleet has been carefully restored for use in film shoots. It was renovated by the film industry at the Charlestown Harbour shipyard in the UK.

In 1991, the ship was known as the Santa Maria and became the 15th-century carrack for the Ridley Scott film “1492: Christopher Columbus”. It also appeared for distant scenes in the American film “In the Heart of the Ocean” (2015) directed by Ron Howard.

In 2005, he took part in the 200th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Trafalgar in Portsmouth.