In the Land of White Death

by Valerian Albanov

  There is no denying Albanov’s compassion: The sleepless vigils as he awaits absent colleagues, the retracing of his hard-won path to hunt for stragglers, give proof of his humanity. Yet at the same time, he must have been an autocratic and headstrong leader. In an age when interpersonal conflicts were politely veiled in public accounts, Albanov makes no secret of his disdain for Brusilov. Even more strikingly (and this is another strength of the book), Albanov rails in print against the apathy and incompetence of his teammates, despite the fact that as he writes in 1917, they are all but one dead. Thus “My companions are no better than children”; they are “foolish”; “I am sure they are capable of anything.” When one crewman carelessly loses an invaluable Remington rifle, Albanov is so outraged that he strikes out at any teammate who crosses his path.

  The hazards of that ninety-day journey, from being chased by walruses to falling through thin ice into the numbing sea, make up a gauntlet of continuous peril. The ups and downs of hope and despair measure out the psychological agon of the voyage. And the sheer mystery of the fate of missing comrades haunts the reader just as it haunts Albanov.

  Yet many a dramatic Arctic ordeal has produced only a plodding expedition book. What is the secret of Albanov’s all-but-unconscious genius as narrator?

  The style is plain and direct, though rich in concrete detail. Yet in the breast of the plainspoken chronicler there also abides the soul of a poet. One of the finest passages in the book is the lyrical outburst Albanov delivers upon reaching land for the first time in almost two years. The cacophonous birdsong sounds “the hymn of life and the hymn of existence”; tiny yellow flowers were “greeting us again with their pure and charming splendor”; even the sight of innumerable small stones gleaming in the sun imparts an unspeakable joy. Yet there hangs over this idyll the unguessed tribulation of the future—for the land would prove far more fatal to Albanov’s men than the sea.

  With all the hindsight available to him as he took up his pen in 1917, Albanov cunningly resisted the temptation to foreshadow or moralize. He had kept a diary throughout his excruciating escape. In his book, he recasts the narrative as that diary, though without doubt the entries have been enhanced and polished (exhausted men do not write lyrical odes to refulgent nature). The effect of this strategy is to recapture in all its tense uncertainty the drama of never knowing whether a given day’s actions lead one closer to safety or to death. At the most optimistic moments, the cruel Arctic knocks Albanov’s party flat; yet in the depths of their discouragement, it unveils a corridor of hope.

  Moreover, Albanov seems blessed with an inborn knack for metaphor. In the midst of his closest call, the iceberg on which he and his last partner, Alexander Konrad, have taken refuge cracks open and dumps the two men, trapped in a double sleeping bag, into the sea. Albanov likens their plight to that of “kittens thrown together in a sack to be drowned.” The most ordinary turns in the party’s grim trek push Albanov to an apostrophic eloquence, as when he hears a teammate exhort the moribund Shpakovsky, “Do you want to join Nilsen?”—the teammate who had died the day before. There follows an inspired pensée in which Albanov analyzes the small increments by which exhaustion leads to death. The passage serves as well as Albanov’s implicit prayer for deliverance.

  By the time his book was published, Albanov had only two years to live. Having survived, through improvisatory pluck and heroic perseverance, one of the most deadly of all Arctic ordeals, Albanov would perish in 1919—in only his thirty-eighth year. By some accounts he died of typhoid fever; others report that he was killed absurdly when a boxcar loaded with munitions blew up in a Russian train station. His fellow survivor, Alexander Konrad, lived until 1940.

  Of the nine men who died trying to reach Cape Flora; of the thirteen, including Brusilov and Yerminiya Zhdanko, who stayed aboard the Saint Anna; of the doomed ship itself—not a trace was ever found.

  ——

  DAVID ROBERTS is the author of over a dozen books on mountaineering, exploration, and archaeology, including, most recently, True Summit. His work regularly appears in National Geographic Adventure, Smithsonian, and Outside, among other publications.

  eISBN: 978-0-679-64231-2

  v3.0

  WHY I LEFT THE SAINT ANNA

  How many weeks and months have gone by since the day I left the Saint Anna and bade farewell to Lieutenant Brusilov! Little did I know that our separation was to be forever.

  The ship was completely trapped by the ice pack. She had been drifting northward for a year and a half off Franz Josef Land. In October 1912, she had become icebound in the Kara Sea at latitude 71°45´ north, unable to advance or retreat, at the mercy of the winds and tides.

  Together with thirteen other crewmembers I left the ship to her aimless course and set off on foot toward Franz Josef Land, in search of an inhabited shore.

  Although it is not overly long since I left, I find it somewhat difficult to re-create from memory a complete picture of those dismal weeks and months on board the Saint Anna. I have completely forgotten many incidents, but certain events remain engraved on my memory. If the diary I had kept on the ship had been saved, my narrative would of course have made use of its entire contents. But all the notes that I had entrusted to two companions on the eve of my rescue disappeared with them when they failed to reach Cape Flora on Northbrook Island in the Franz Josef archipelago. The few notes I kept on my person are intact, and cover the period from May 14 to August 10, 1914. Here follows the excerpt from Lieutenant Brusilov’s logbook relating the events which caused our separation, and which I submitted upon my return to the Hydrographic Bureau of Petrograd:

  September 9. I relieved the navigation officer of his duties.

  January 9. Lengthened the Thomson sounding cable with a makeshift wire cable, as the 400-fathom sounding line that we had at our disposal was inadequate. Navigation Officer Albanov, whom I have relieved of his duties, asked me for permission and materials to build a kayak in which he planned to leave the ship in the springtime. Appreciating his difficult position on board, I gave my consent. Northern lights in the evening.

  January 22. The ship’s crew asked me to meet with them in their quarters, and when I did they also requested permission to build kayaks, following the navigation officer’s example. They were afraid of spending a third winter in such perilous circumstances and with so few provisions. At first I tried to talk them out of their plan by promising that if the ship did not break free of the ice by the following summer, we too would abandon the ship and set off in our lifeboats. I reminded them of the fate of the Jeannette, whose crew had been forced to cover a far greater distance in their light craft, but had nevertheless managed to reach a safe port. My efforts were in vain, as none of them believed the Saint Anna would ever break free again, and their only desire was to see their homeland again. I announced that they could all make ready to leave if that is what they wanted. A small but increasing number of them decided to stay, more than I actually would have liked, but I did not want to force anyone to leave. Together with the nurse, those who finally remained on board were two harpooners, the engineer, the stoker, the steward, the cook, and two young sailors. I needed their services in any case to maintain and run the ship. Taking their numbers into account, our supplies should last for one year, if rationed carefully, and so in the final analysis I was quite pleased with this unexpected turn of events. My sense of responsibility had remained intact because the others were leaving voluntarily, and had freely chosen their fate. . . .

  At my request, the following paragraph explaining my reasons for leaving the Saint Anna was added to Brusilov’s logbook: “After Lieutenant Brusilov had recovered from his long and serious illness, our relations became more and more strained to the point of becoming intolerable in our present desperate situation. As I could not foresee a solution to our conflict, I asked the lieutenant to relieve me of my duties as navigator. After some reflection Lieutenant Brusilov complied with my request, for which I am extremely grate
ful to him.”

  His own account proves beyond question that I asked to leave alone. It was only on January 22 that he informed me that certain crewmembers wished to accompany me. The only reason I wanted to leave was my personal dispute with Brusilov, whereas the others wanted to avoid spending a third winter marooned on the ice with dwindling supplies.

  Now as I look back in retrospect on my quarrel with Brusilov, I can see that the pressure of our desperate situation had frayed our nerves to the breaking point. Our journey had been dogged by misfortune from the very start. Serious illness, a pervasive doubt that our fortunes would soon change, the certainty that we were at the mercy of hostile natural forces, and, finally, the growing concern about our inadequate food supply, were grounds for all manner of disagreements and flaring tempers. The minor frictions that a prolonged sharing of quarters inevitably produces drove us further and further apart, and finally created an almost insurmountable barrier between us. Neither of us made any effort to put our differences aside and let bygones be bygones. The air was electric whenever we met; an underlying hostility became more and more evident, and senseless fits of anger prevailed on every occasion. At times we quarreled so violently, for practically no reason at all, that we were left speechless and had to stay away from each other to avoid more serious outbursts. If we each had tried, after the fact, to recall exactly why we had quarreled, we would seldom have found a legitimate reason. Even after lengthy reflection I cannot remember whether, after September 1913, we ever once had a normal, civilized conversation! We were always overemotional and often broke off our discussions in a rage. Today I am certain that we would have understood one another well enough if we had both been able to stay calm. No doubt we would have agreed that in most cases there was no cause for dispute, and that a little mutual patience would have quickly improved our relationship. But that was impossible in our overwrought state. In spite of everything, however, we did not part on bad terms. The odd, unbalanced state of mind that had prevailed on the ship nowseems hard to fathom. . . .

  ——

  The Saint Anna had been very well fitted out and stocked with supplies for eighteen months. There were only twenty-four crewmembers, but our supplies had been calculated for thirty. So for the time being there was no danger of shortages. During the first year, moreover, our bear hunting had been quite successful, and had added considerably to our provisions. We could therefore assume that strict management of our resources would allow the entire crew an additional year’s grace, until December 1914. Bountiful hunting might have improved our situation somewhat, but in the second year we had encountered absolutely no animals to hunt, so there was no good reason to count on this.

  Early in 1914, moreover, we realized that it would be impossible to free the Saint Anna from the ice; at best, we would drift until the autumn of 1915, more than three years after we had departed Alexandrovsk.* If we stayed on board, starvation would become a real threat by January 1915, if not sooner. In the darkness of the long polar night, a struggle against hunger carries no hope of salvation. During this season, hunting is out of the question, as all animals are in hibernation. The only certainty for those trapped in its realm is that “white death” lies in wait for them.

  * Having drifted north almost to latitude 83°, the Saint Anna had no chance of breaking loose from the ice pack in the summer of 1914. The ship’s only hope of deliverance lay in a westward drift toward the Atlantic through the winter of 1914 to 1915. See Introduction.

  Although a large number of crewmen were abandoning the vessel at a time when conditions for traveling and hunting were at their most favorable, and were taking with them two months’ supplies—mainly ship’s biscuits—those staying on board the Saint Anna would still have enough provisions to last them comfortably until the autumn of 1915. We assumed also that the ship would, in the meantime, eventually be able to reach open water somewhere between Greenland and Svalbard.

  Would our departure compromise the running of the ship? Brusilov himself was of the opinion that a crew of ten was quite sufficient to man her, even on the open sea. On the other hand, our departure would add one other appreciable advantage to the rationing of supplies, namely the saving of fuel, which was perilously scarce.

  There was not a single log or piece of coal left on board; all we had left for heating was bear fat and seal blubber mixed with machine oil. The samovar was kept boiling with wood from cabin walls and other nonstructural parts of the ship. During the winter of 1913 to 1914, the entire crew lived in two cabins aft, an upper one that was smaller and colder, and another on a lower deck that was quite warm because it also served as the galley. After our departure everyone would be able to live in that lower cabin, which would greatly simplify the heating problem. Their health would improve as a result, since the temperature of the other cabin rarely rose above 41° Fahrenheit during the day and easily dropped below 28° Fahrenheit at night.

  Given all these circumstances, the lieutenant could only look on our departure as a blessing that would be to everyone’s benefit. Nevertheless, the same uncertain future faced us all. No one could foresee who would succeed in this unequal struggle against the treacherous Arctic elements.

  PREPARATIONS FOR THE SLEDGE EXPEDITION

  My preparations began on January 10, 1914. There was plenty to do. Eventually we had to build seven sledges and seven kayaks, prepare our clothing, sew and repair our boots, gather together all the supplies and think of a thousand things at once. Because we lacked essential materials and proper tools, the work was extraordinarily difficult. The wood made available to us was of poor quality. We had to manufacture rivets from copper scrap; we even had to make many of the tools we required. The many wooden pieces we sawed for each kayak were first joined together with rivets, and then lashed firmly with strong twine. When fully assembled, the entire wooden skeleton was also wrapped with the twine, and then covered with canvas cut from spare sails. All this work was carried out deep in the ship’s hold, where the temperature dipped as low as —36° Fahrenheit, by the faint glow of seal-oil lamps, which we called “smudge pots” because they gave off more smoke than light. Most of the work was delicate and painstaking, so it had to be done with bare hands despite the terrible cold. Our fingers quickly became chilled to the bone and we would have to warm them repeatedly over the lamps. In the bitter subzero temperatures, it was particularly excruciating to rivet the kayaks and sewthe sailcloth that covered them. Our homemade needles were so cold to the touch that they burned like red-hot iron and blistered our fingertips. We worked from early morning until late at night, and gradually the hold was filled with kayaks and sledges. We lightened the hard work by telling jokes and singing songs.

  Each kayak was designed to carry two men, as well as their equipment and supplies, and each was given a name such as “Gull,” “Auk,” “Snow Bunting,” “Teal,” and “Fulmar.” Due to the extreme cold of the ship’s hold, it was impossible to give the boats a finishing coat of paint. We solved the problem by lowering the kayaks through a skylight in the afterdeck into the relative warmth of the galley. For a week it was so crowded with kayaks we could move around in the galley only bent double, almost on all fours.

  In March a small lead opened in the ice at the bow of the ship, which widened to be twelve feet across. There we were able to subject our small craft to sea trials, and discovered that they performed better than our clumsy tools and materials would have allowed us to hope. The kayaks proved to be spacious and stable. The materials were by no means suitable, admittedly, and certainly not what we would have chosen, but we had to use whatever was at hand. For the longitudinal members of the frames we were forced to use desiccated spruce planking stripped from the ceiling of the mess; needless to say, these boards were not particularly strong or flexible. Most of the ribs were fabricated from old barrel staves, so each frame had to be wrapped with twine to prevent the wood from splintering.

  The sledges had even less to recommend them. For runners we used brittle birch
boards scavenged from a battered mess table. Many of these pieces shattered at our first attempts to bend them into the proper shape, forcing us to fabricate some of the runners from ash oars. On several occasions the inferior materials made available to us by Brusilov caused me to quarrel so violently with him that I still cringe to think about it. He was convinced that all we would have to do was to set off on some heading—a difficult journey to be sure, but a short one—and very soon we would reach Franz Josef Land, after five or six days at the most. So he smiled indulgently at our efforts to make the sledges and kayaks as sturdy as possible. He claimed it would be far wiser to use one of the ship’s lifeboats, and reminded us of Lieutenant De Long’s expedition.* But I did not viewour journey so optimistically, and the rigors of fate would soon reveal that our trek across the ice—which I had estimated would take a month—would in fact turn out to be even more terrible than I imagined. It would have been impossible to haul a heavy lifeboat mounted on a sledge and laden with 2,400 pounds of supplies over the rugged pack ice.

  * George Washington De Long was captain of the Jeannette (see Introduction). After his ship was crushed, De Long and his crew set out across the ice with three of the Jeannette’s lifeboats.

  In any case we did not even have an accurate fix on our present position, or know whether we would find land at all, as we did not possess a map of Franz Josef Land. To be able to trace our perambulations over the ice, I painstakingly drew a grid of meridians and parallels onto which I copied an enlarged outline of Franz Josef Land as it appeared on the map in Nansen’s Farthest North. Nansen himself said that he ascribed no particular accuracy to this map and had only included it in order to give an approximate idea of the archipelago. It showed Cape Fligely at 82°12´ north and, to the north, the great expanse of Petermann Land with King Oscar Land to the northwest. How surprised we were in early March and April, therefore, when our astronomical observations pinpointed our position in the middle of these landmasses, while in reality there was nothing but endless pack ice as far as the eye could see.* There were no signs of any nearby land—nor any polar bears (the previous year at the same time we had shot forty-seven), nor leads in the ice, nor the dark line of a “water sky”† along the horizon that is normally an indication of open water. On the contrary, the flat horizon stretched into the distance in all directions, dashing all our hopeful fantasies. These unmistakable signs foretold a long and arduous route through deep snow and over treacherous ice.