Joseph Rene Bellot (1826 53) was a French naval officer whose travels took him from Africa to the Arctic before his tragic death at the age of 27. In 1851 he joined a British expedition to search for the missing polar explorer Sir John Franklin (1786 1847), whose expedition to find the North-West Passage was last heard of in July 1845. Although the voyage was unsuccessful in its search, it explored previously unknown areas of the Arctic. Bellot kept extensive notes about his journey in this remote region; they originally appeared in French in 1854 and were translated into English in 1855 and...