He served on board a number of ships before signing on as navigator aboard the, under Captain Georgy Brusilov, for an intendend expedition to traverse the Northern Sea Route – a feat which only once before had been successfully completed, by explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld. The expedition was ill-planned and ill-executed by Brusilov, and the Svyataya Anna became locked inthe sea 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 northwest of Franz Josef Land, and did not seem likely to be freed that year either.
Journey across the ice
Albanov, believing that their position was hopeless, requested permission from Captain Brusilov to be relieved from his duties as second-in-command 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. Thirteen other crewmen accompanied Albanov when he travelled south-westwards by ski, sledge, and kayak. The progress was difficult because of the cracks in the ice, the numerous polynias and the abundance of ridges which made progress slow. After a long and gruesome ordeal, only Albanov and one crewman, Alexander Konrad, made it to Cape Flora on Northbrook Island, where they knew that Frederick George Jackson had left provisions and a hut in a previous expedition. Albanov and Konrad were rescued by timely arrival of the Svyatoy Foka under the command of Georgy Sedov, while they were preparing for the winter.
Later life
Albanov was later convinced to write up his memoirs of his adventure, and they were first published in Saint Petersburg in 1917. He returned to the sea, but died only a few years later. Accounts of his death vary, with some having him die of typhoid, and some reporting that he was killed in the explosion of a railway wagon carrying munitions in Achinsk, in the Governorate of Yeniseysk in Siberia.
Legacy
The data about the drift of the Svyataya Anna on the pack ice of the Kara Sea supplied by Albanov were carefully studied in 1924, by Soviet oceanographer Vladimir Wiese. He detected an odd deviation of the path of the ship's drift caused by certain variations of the patterns of sea and ice currents. Wiese deemed that the deviation was caused by the presence of an undiscovered island whose coordinates he was able to calculate with precision thanks to Albanov's data. This island was later discovered and named Wiese Island. In 1975, Arctic expert William Barr wrote, "The name of Valerian Ivanovich Albanov must be ranked among those of the immortals of polar exploration." A glacier in October Revolution Island, in the Severnaya Zemlya group has been named after Valerian Albanov. A Russian expedition in September 2010, following the route of the crew membersleft behind, found some remainders of them: a human skeleton, a watch, snowshoes, a knife, a spoon with a sailor's initials, and sunglasses made from empty rum bottles' glass in the shores of Franz Josef Land.
