Valerian Ivanovich Albanov

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Valerian Albanov

Valerian Iwanowitsch Albanow ( Russian Валериан Иванович Альбанов ; * 1881 in Voronezh ; † 1919 ) was a Russian navigator and polar explorer , who was best known for his report on the failed Arctic expedition led by Georgi Brusilov from 1912 to 1914. He was one of only two survivors.

Life

After the early death of his father, a veterinarian , Albanow grew up with his uncle in Ufa . At the age of seventeen he went to the nautical school in Saint Petersburg , which he graduated in 1904. He then went on various ships on the Baltic Sea before becoming first officer of the steamer Ob , which sailed on the Yenisei . From 1909 to 1911 he did service on the steamship Kildin , which called at various British ports from Arkhangelsk .

When Georgi Brussilow wanted to conquer the Northeast Passage with his schooner St. Anna in 1912 , Albanow hired as the helmsman on the ship. The St. Anna froze in October 1912 in the Kara Sea before the Yamal Peninsula in the ice and drifted with this northward. Serious cases of scurvy occurred on board during the first hibernation . When the ship was not released in the summer of 1913, the situation became critical. The food supplies were sufficient for a second hibernation, but by no means for a third. Albanov asked Brusilov to leave the ship. He wanted to try to walk to Cape Flora on Northbrook Island in the south of Franz Josef Land . He assumed that a possible aid expedition would begin their search here. About half of the crew joined Albanow. The winter was used to build makeshift sleds and kayaks . When the troop set out on April 23, 1914, the St. Anna was already north of the 83rd parallel. After a few men had turned back, Albanow had ten comrades with him, with whom he marched to the south-west across the ice under extreme hardship and exertion and at the same time drifted with it. It took more than two months to reach Alexandraland, the first island in the Franz Josef Archipelago. Open water was also found here. Since only two of the kayaks were seaworthy, the group split up at times. One group moved across the country on skis , the other drove along the coast in kayaks under Albanow's direction. At Cape Grant, the southern tip of Prince Georg Land , Albanov waited in vain for the land troop. The second kayak was later lost in a storm, so that only Albanow and the sailor Alexander Konrad (1890–1940) reached Cape Flora in mid-July 1914. On August 2, they were rescued there by the Sedov expedition .

Albanow went on to sea, initially together with Konrad on the icebreaker Canada , later on the Baltic Sea again. He died in 1919.

meaning

Albanov's records were of particular importance for the geography of Franz Josef Land. They showed that the islands of Petermann Land and King Oskar Land, shown on Julius Payer's maps north and west of Rudolf Island , do not exist. From the drift path of St. Anna , the Russian-Soviet oceanographer Wladimir Wiese concluded the existence of an as yet unknown island at the northern end of the Kara Sea. It was found in 1930 and named Meadow Island .

Albanov's excitingly written book In the Realm of the White Death has a firm place in Arctic literature.

literature

  • Walerian Albanow: In the realm of the white death , Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-442-76020-8
  • William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 1 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 106–108 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Web links

Remarks

  1. In the summer of 2010, the remains of a member of the land troop were found on the southwest coast of Prinz-Georg-Land between Cape Neill and Cape Grant. Some everyday objects and diary pages could also be recovered. See: Natalia Pavlova: On the trail of the “Two Captains”: The unique finds from the expedition to the Franz-Josef-Land archipelago ( memorial from December 22, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Voice of Russia , September 17, 2010.