All polar historians sit up and take notice when they are confronted by a volume with which Professor William Barr is associated, if not as author then as translator and editor. There will be few, if any, who can claim that they have acquired no new knowledge from one of his volumes and this reviewer freely admits that he approaches Barr's books with a mixture of pleasurable anticipation and trepidation, knowing that a fascinating tale will certainly be told but at the same time fearful that his own ignorance will be chastised yet again. And among all of Barr's voluminous output, this particular book is a real gem, worthy of the attention of all with interests in our area of concern.
The expedition of which this volume sets out to chronicle a part, was private and was initiated by Georgiy L'vovich Brusilov, an officer in the Russian navy. Luckily for him, his family was wealthy and the venture was generously funded by his uncle. The aim was to navigate the northern sea route from west to east. Valerian Albanov, born in Voronezh in 1881 and educated at the St. Petersburg Navigation College, was the navigator on board the expedition's vessel, Sv. Anna. It departed from St. Petersburg on 28 July 1912, rather late in the year, and having sailed round the Kola peninsula, reached Yugoskiy Shar on 2 September continuing into the Kara Sea and encountering very heavy ice. The vessel wintered in the ice in 1912–1913 and 1913–1914 by the end of which Sv. Anna had begun to drift west to the north of Franz Josef Land.
However matters on board were not harmonious and relations between Brusilov and Albanov had deteriorated to the point at which the latter sought and obtained permission to build a kayak and to leave the ship in spring 1914 with such of the crew as wished to accompany him. In the event he departed from the vessel on 10 April with 14 men plus kayaks and sledges. The party remaining on board was never heard of again and no relics of the ship have ever been found. The views of Albanov's party were far from coherent, however, and after 10 days, three men elected to return to the ship while one man chose to attempt to find his own route. Surely a gesture of desperation! None of these were ever seen again. The overall route of the party was south, hence the title of Albanov's book. After much suffering, the men remaining with Albanov arrived near Mys Garmsuort on Zemlya Aleksandry aiming to head for the famous Mys Flora where Albanov hoped to find provisions left behind by other expeditions. Due to a shortage of kayaks some of the party were forced to attempt this part of the journey on ski over fast ice. They, also, were never seen again and, after other losses, only Albanov himself and a sailor, Aleksandr Konrad, reached reasonable safety at Mys Flora on 9 July. Here their luck turned and they were incredibly fortunate. Preparing for yet another winter in the Arctic they were met by Sv. Foca the vessel of an expedition under Georgiy Yakovlevich Sedov that transported them back to Russia.
This book is Albanov's own narrative, originally published in 1917, of what was a disastrous expedition and one which contained familiar ingredients of such; suffering, courage, personal disputes and endless close encounters with death with an eventual, yet muted, triumph at the end. And of course one might expect that the account would be rather one sided and appreciate that this is incapable of being checked.
What sort of man was Albanov? How far can we judge him on the strength of his own writings? One quotation is indicative in this regard and this reviewer knows of none other in polar literature that appears, at first sight, to be quite so hard hearted:
Nilsen was hauled to the grave on a sledge and buried; a heap of rocks was placed on the grave. Not one of us shed a tear over this remote lonely grave; we were all somewhat dulled and hardened. The death of our companion did not affect us much at all, it was as if something quite normal had happened (page 6).
But there is no doubt of Albanov's personal heroism during the journey towards Franz Josef Land but reading between the lines it is clear that leadership was not his strong point. He seems to have failed, if he ever attempted it, to build a coherent team. One gets the feeling that his party consisted of several men each of whom was following his own personal agenda and that there was little overall appreciation of the obvious benefits to be accrued in such circumstances from sticking together.
It is equally obvious, however, that Albanov was a truthful narrator and one who made no effort to embroider or embellish the facts. For example, he is completely honest concerning the breakdown of his relations with Brusilov even though when he wrote his account it seemed obvious that the latter would never reappear from the Arctic ice and he could, if he wished, place the blame wholly on his superior officer. He does not do this but admits that both of them were ‘seriously neurotic’ (page 35):
No matter how we tried, we were unable to control our sick irritability; we would suddenly suffer from severe shortage of breath, our voices would break, lumps would come to our throats, and each time we would have to discontinue our discussion without having clarified anything (page 36).
This plus the realisation that supplies on board were insufficient for another winter was the main reason for Albanov's desire to leave the ship and the crew appears to have been motivated by the same problem concerning food.
This edition, translated and edited by Barr, in his usual meticulous style, fills in a major gap in Arctic literature, throwing light as it does on an expedition that seems doomed from the start but from which, unlikely as it seems, two men survived. But not only is Albanov's account printed but the book also includes Brusilov's own account of the ice drift of Sv. Anna up to the time of Albanov's departure. Clearly Brusilov, despite his obvious reservations concerning Anbanov trusted him with his own journal. The book also includes informative introductions.
Albanov died in the autumn of 1919, having contracted typhus travelling between Omsk and Krasnoyarsk after a period of duty on an icebreaker. The last survivor, Konrad, served on ships of the Soviet merchant fleet and died in St. Petersburg in 1940.
A word about the volume itself. It is published under the auspices of the Russian Geographical Society with the support of the Sovcomflot Library. They are to be warmly congratulated on the venture. It is handsomely and solidly bound, with a critical apparatus, useful maps and interesting illustrations. Unfortunately the print run was very short and this reviewer believes that it is already out of print. But should any reader of Polar Record manage to secure a copy, that reader will possess an almost unknown but major work of expedition literature by a man who deserves to be much better appreciated than he is. The icebreaking oil tanker Shturman Albanov named after him, was recently put in service. One hopes that there is a copy of the book in the ship's library!.
