Biography
Albanov was born in 1881 in Voronezh and was raised by his uncle in the city of Ufa. At the age of seventeen he entered the Naval College at Saint Petersburg, from which he graduated in 1904. He served on board a number of ships before signing on as navigator aboard the Saint Anna under Georgy Brusilov for an expedition intended to traverse the Northeast Passage (a feat which had only been successfully performed once before, by the Finnish explorer Nordenskiöld). The expedition was ill-planned and ill-executed by Captain Brusilov, and the Saint Anna became locked in the polar ice of the Kara Sea in October 1912. Supplies were abundant, so officers and crew prepared themselves for wintering, hoping to be freed in the following year's thaw.
However, during 1913 the sea remained completely frozen. By early 1914 the ship had drifted with the ice NW of Franz Josef Land and did not seem likely to be freed that year either. Albanov, believing that their position was hopeless, requested permission from Captain Brusilov to be relieved from his duties as second-in-command in order to leave the ship and attempt to return to civilization on foot. Albanov's aim was to reach Hvidtenland, the northeastermost island group of Franz Josef Land. He used Fridtjof Nansen's inaccurate map, full of dotted lines where the archipelago was still unexplored.
Thirteen other crewmen accompanied Albanov when he travelled south-westwards by ski, sledge, and kayak. The progress was difficult because of the cracks in the ice, the numerous polynias and the abundance of ridges which made progress slow. After a long and gruesome ordeal, only Albanov and one crewman, Alexander Konrad, made it to Cape Flora in Franz Josef Land, where they knew that Fridtjof Nansen had left provisions and a hut in a previous expedition. Albanov and Konrad were rescued by timely arrival of the Saint Foka, while they were preparing for the winter.
Albanov was later convinced to write up his memoirs of his adventure, and they were first published in Saint Petersburg in 1917. Albanov returned to the sea, but died only a few years later. Accounts of his death vary, with some having him die of typhoid, and some reporting that he was killed in the explosion of a railway wagon carrying munitions in Achinsk, Siberia.
Read more about this topic: Valerian Albanov
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