Dimensions
136 x 203 x 16mm
An Epic Story of Survival in the Siberian Arctic
In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, 32-year-old Russian navigator Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, his ship, the "Saint Anna", was frozen fast in the pack ice of the treacherous Kara Sea, a misfortune grievously compounded by an incompetent commander, the absence of crucial nautical charts, insufficient fuel, and inadequate provisions that left the crew weak and debilitated by scurvy.
In January 1914, drifting helplessly north and believing the "Saint Anna" would never free herself from the ice, Albanov and 13 crewmen left the ship, hauling makeshift sledges and kayaks behind them across the frozen sea. With only an inaccurate map, he guided his men on a 235-mile journey of continuous peril, blizzards, disintegrating ice floes, attacks by polar bears and walrus, starvation, sickness, snowblindness and mutiny.
That any of the team survived is a wonder. That Albanov kept a diary of his 90-day ordeal is nearly miraculous. This is Albanov's story.
