In the Land of White Death: An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic (25 page)

Saint Foka
search for

and sightings of land

Smith, Leigh

Smoking

Snow blindness

of Albanov

on Alexandra Land

and early days of Albanov expedition

onset of

and sightings of land

and southward drift of Albanov

expedition

Svalbard

Sverdrup, Otto

Telegrams, sending of

Thieves

Tin box, discovery of

Tobacco

Tropical fruit hallucination

Vardo, Norway

Vitamin A overdose

Vitamin B

Vize, V.

Vladivostok

“Waiting camp”

Walrus

on Alexandra Land

attacks by

on Cape Flora

and Cape Flora journey

as dangerous

description of.

as fuel for
Saint Foka

as hazard of Albanov expedition

hunting of

and Nansen’s expedition

on Northbrook Island

and original plans for
Saint Anna

polar bears compared to

and rationale for
Saint Anna
voyage

and rescue of Albanov and Konrad

and sightings of land

as tame and lazy

Weyprecht Bay

Whales

“White death”

White Island

White Sea

Whitsunday

Windward,
Jackson expedition on

Women, on Arctic expeditions

Worcester Glacier

World War I

Yamal Peninsula

Yenisei River

Zhdanko, Yerminiya

Ziegler (William) Expedition

 

V
ALERIAN
I
VANOVICH
A
LBANOV
was born in 1881 in the city of Voronezh, near the Don River in central Russia, some three hundred miles south of Moscow. His father, a veterinarian, died when Albanov was a young child, so he was raised by an uncle who lived in Ufa, a port on the Belaya River in the southwestern Urals. Mesmerized by seafaring tales from an early age, Albanov embarked on his first maritime adventure while still a schoolboy, but was forced to return home when his small craft sank. Though his uncle wanted him to become an engineer, Albanov was determined to study navigation, and at the age of seventeen he entered the Naval College at St. Petersburg. During the four years he spent as a student there, he supported himself by building scale models of ships. Upon graduation in 1904, Albanov trained on various vessels in the Baltic Sea before traveling to Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia, where he sailed down the Yenisei River to the Kara Sea as a first officer on the steamer
Ob.
From 1909 through 1911 he made numerous voyages between Arkhangel’sk and British ports aboard the steamship
Kildin.

Then, in 1912, Albanov signed on as navigator of the schooner
Saint Anna,
under the command of Captain Georgiy Brusilov, bound for Vladivostok across the Northeast Passage—the ill-starred voyage that is recounted so vividly in these pages. Even before Albanov and Alexander Konrad fought their way back to civilization and told of the plight of their icebound shipmates, a number of search parties (including one headed by the seasoned Arctic explorer Otto Sverdrup) set out to find the
Saint Anna
but failed to turn up any trace of the ship. In October 1914 Albanov met the hydrographer Leonid Breitfuss, who persuaded him to write an account of the astounding ordeal he had just endured. Albanov’s memoir, originally titled
Na
iug, k Zemle Frantsa Iosifa
(
Southbound to Franz Josef Land
), was published in St. Petersburg in 1917, on the eve of the October Revolution, as an appendix to the journal
Zapisok po
gidrografii
(
Notes on Hydrography
). Various editions of the work subsequently appeared in Russian as
Mezhdu zhizniu i
smertiu
(
Between Life and Death,
1925),
Zateriannye vo ldakh
(
Lost in the Ice,
1934 and 1978), and
Podvigi shturmana V. I.
Albanova
(
The Exploits of the Navigator V. I. Albanov,
1953). It was also translated into German as
Irrfahrten im Lande des
weissen Todes
(
Travels in the Land of White Death,
1925) and later into French as
Au pays de la mort blanche
(
In the Land of
White Death,
1928 and 1998). More recently, Albanov’s post-expedition letters were published in the journal
Letopis
severa
(
Northern Memoirs;
Moscow, 1985, 11:174–81).

Despite his harrowing escape from the
Saint Anna,
Albanov continued going to sea. For a time he served with his fellow survivor Konrad aboard the
Canada,
an ice-breaker that serviced the port of Arkhangel’sk. Following a brief stay in a military hospital in St. Petersburg, he also sailed on ships from the Baltic ports of Tallinn and Haapsalu, and from Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei River. Valerian Albanov died in the fall of 1919. By some accounts he succumbed to typhoid; other sources report that he was killed when a munitions wagon exploded as he was passing through a railway station in the Siberian town of Achinsk.

On the thirtieth anniversary of Albanov’s death, the noted Russian geographer and Arctic explorer Vladimir Vize (who was aboard the
Saint Foka
when that ship rescued Albanov) paid him this tribute in the journal
Letopis
severa
(
Northern Memoirs;
Moscow, 1949, 1:279–81): “Albanov owed his survival to his personal qualities: bravery, energy, and strong will. . . . His book, with its intriguing drama and fascinating simplicity and sincerity, is among the most prominent writings about the Arctic in Russian literature.”

In 1975, Arctic expert William Barr wrote, “The name of Valerian Ivanovich Albanov must be ranked among those of the immortals of polar exploration.”

T
HE
M
ODERN
L
IBRARY
E
DITORIAL
B
OARD

Maya Angelou

•

Daniel J. Boorstin

•

A. S. Byatt

•

Caleb Carr

•

Christopher Cerf

•

Ron Chernow

•

Shelby Foote

•

Stephen Jay Gould

•

Vartan Gregorian

•

Charles Johnson

•

Jon Krakauer

•

Edmund Morris

•

Joyce Carol Oates

•

Elaine Pagels

•

John Richardson

•

Salman Rushdie

•

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

•

Carolyn See

•

William Styron

•

Gore Vidal