Valerian Albanov
Valerian Ivanovich Albanow (Russian Валериан Иванович Альбанов; * 1881 in Voronezh, † 1919) was a Russian navigator and Arctic explorer, who was known primarily for his report on the failed Arctic expedition led by Georgy Brusilov 1912-1914. 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 seventeen, he went to the Nautical College in Saint Petersburg, which he completed in 1904. He then went on various ships on the Baltic Sea before he was first officer of the steamer Whether the wrong on the Yenisei. From 1909 to 1911 he was on duty on the steamer Kildin, which started from Arkhangelsk from various UK ports.
As Georgy Brusilov in 1912 with his schooner St. Anna wanted to conquer the Northeast Passage, Albanow hired as helmsman on the ship. The St. Anna froze in October 1912 in the Kara Sea off the Yamal Peninsula in the ice and drifted with this northward. Already during the first winter came on board to severe cases of scurvy. When the ship was released not in the summer of 1913, the situation became critical. Although the food supplies ranged still for a second winter, but not for a third. Albanow Brusilov asked to be allowed to leave the ship. He wanted to try on Northbrook Island in the south of Franz -Josef- country to reach Cape Flora on foot. He assumed that a possible rescue mission would search their start here. About half of the crew joined Albanow. The winter was used to build makeshift sledges and kayaks. When the party broke up on April 23, 1914, the St. Anna was already north of 83 degrees latitude. After some men were reversed Albanow had ten comrades with him, with which he marched to the southwest under severe privations and hardships over the ice while drifting with this. Only after about two months, the first island of the Franz Josef Archipelago was achieved with Alexandra country. Here were also found open water. Since only two of the kayaks were still seaworthy, the group split times. A squad moved on skis over the country to another that went under the direction Albanows a kayak along the coast. At Cape Grant, the southern tip of Prince George's country, Albanow waited in vain for the country squad. Later, in a storm was the second kayak lost, so that only Albanow and the sailor Alexander Konrad (1890-1940) mid- July 1914 reached Cape Flora. On August 2, they were there, rescued by the Sedov expedition.
Albanow drove on to the sea, first together with Konrad on the icebreaker Canada, later on the Baltic Sea. He died in 1919.
Importance
Albanows records were mainly for the geography Franz Josef of that locale. They showed that in the cards Julius Payer north and northeast of the Rudolf Island reported Islands Petermann country and Oskar country do not exist. From the drift path of St. Anna of the Russian- Soviet oceanographer Vladimir graduated meadow on the existence of an unknown island at the northern end of the Kara Sea. She was found in 1930 and known as Meadow Island.
Albanows excitingly written book In the Realm of the white death has a firm place in the Arctic literature.