Bellot Strait, at 71° 58´ N, separates Somerset Island from the Boothia Peninsula, marking the northernmost point on the mainland of North America. The 2-km-wide passage was discovered in 1852 by Captain William Kennedy, then commanding an expedition searching for Sir John FRANKLIN, and Joseph René Bellot, a French naval officer and arctic explorer who was Kennedy's second-in-command. Bellot died in the Arctic a year later, aged 26. F.L. McClintock wintered in the strait in 1858-59.