The Tall Ship Kaskelot has been sold to France and sailed to St Malo last Friday to begin life as a charter vessel in French hands, she has been renamed Le Francais. A group of investors led by Bob Escoffier will exploit it through Marine Events.
Kaskelot had just finished a stint as the Southampton Boat Show’s star exhibit, and she was used to open the show. The 153ft (46.6m) three masted barque was built of oak on oak in Denmark in 1948 for trading to Greenland and was once used as whaling vessel and a supply vessel for the Faroe Islands. In British hands since 1981, and owned by the Charlestown-based Square Sail company she was re-rigged and used for charter and for film work starring in movies like Return to Treasure Island (1986), David Copperfield (1999), Longitude (2000), and Shackleton (2002). More recently she has been seen on screen in the popular TV series Poldark.
In 2013 the ship went into T.Nielsen’s shipyard in Gloucester, for an eight month refit which included 12 of her massive four-inch thick planks being replaced. The work also entailed changing her layout to create more crew space and giving her a new galley and moving her helm to an outside position just forward of her pilot house.
Kaskelot, or more correctly Le Francais now, joins the former British-built ship Grand Turk, now renamed Étoile du Roi at the Britanny port, as part of the Étoile Marine Croisières fleet run by Bob Escoffier. But she will surely be missed in Bristol which has been her home port for a number of years.
