The mystery of the missing expedition. Lost in the Ice

On July 28, 1912, the schooner “St. Anna” left St. Petersburg. The expedition, led by Lieutenant Georgy Brusilov, was supposed to travel along the Northern Sea Route to Vladivostok with one wintering. However, already at the beginning of October, the... schooner found itself trapped by ice in the eastern part of the Kara Sea and soon began its forced drift to the north. The team was never able to free themselves from the ice captivity. In April 1914, 11 people, led by navigator Valerian Albanov, left the ship and headed to the mainland. Only two made it to land: navigator Valerian Albanov and sailor Alexander Konrad, whose diaries are combined for the first time in this book. Fragments of the diary of Valerian Albanov, who became the prototype of navigator Klimov, can be found in Veniamin Kaverin’s novel “Two Captains”; here, many other facts from the history of “St. Anne”, called by the writer “St. Mary”, are woven into the context of the artistic narrative.