15,000 Miles in a Ketch is a non-fiction book written by French explorer and sailor Captain Raymond Rallier du Baty, published by Thomas Nelson and Sons in 1922. The book describes Captain du Baty's experience on the voyage of the J.B. Charcot, a small French fishing ketch which weighed 48 tons. The aim of this voyage was to chart the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands, which they funded by hunting southern elephant seals in the local area and selling their oil. The crew set out from Boulogne in September 1907. and sailed across the South Atlantic, Antarctic and Indian seas to outside in July 1909. The voyage totalled a distance of 15,000 miles, which is where the name of the novel originates.