Valerian Albanov

Valerian Albanov
Born	Valerian Ivanovich Albanov 26 May 1881 Voronej
Died	1919 Achinsk
Nationality	Russian
Occupation	Navigator

Valerian Ivanovich Albanov (Russian: Валериа́н Ива́нович Альбанов) (1881 – 1919) was a Russian navigator, best known for being one of two survivors of the Brusilov Expedition of 1912, which killed 22.

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 northeasternmost island group of Franz Josef Land. He used Fridtjof Nansen's inaccurate map, full of dotted lines where the archipelago was still unexplored.

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