Russian scholars have managed to shed some light on mystery surrounding one of the most tragic polar expeditions of the 20th century-the one led by Georgy Brusilov. In 1912, on the brig Saint Anna Brusilov and his crew sailed to the Arctic to become the first Russian-flagged vessel passing through the Northern Sea Route. The brig was trapped in ice and its destiny remains unknown. Only two members of the crew survived and reached the land. They managed to keep all the materials collected during a 2-year hydrological expedition in distant areas of the Extreme North. Currently a group of Russian Arctic researchers are sailing through the route of the Brusilov`s expedition.
It took them five years to get prepared for this expedition. They studied the small archives left from the St. Anna: a diary belonging to navigator Valerian Albanov- it was published in 1917 and inspired a Soviet writer Veniamin Kaverin to create his exceptionally popular novel, The Two Captains.
According to the diary, 11 members of the St. Anna`s crew abandoned the trapped vessel to try to walk on foot. The members of the ongoing expedition have decided to go the same way to find out what could have happened to the missing polar researchers.
The expedition started off on 19 July, and during the first two weeks the participants were lucky to come across several important findings which will probably shed light on mysteries surrounding the Brusilov`s expedition. A representative for the Russian Geographical Society, Yekaterina Popova, comments:
"I`d like to quote the diary kept by our expedition: “Though very cautiously, the Arctic is revealing its century-long mystery. We’ve managed to find human remains, some clothing and equipment, and we believe that these belonged to a member of the Albanov`s group went missing 96 years ago. We’ve also found a pocket watch, a spoon with engraved initials P.S., hand-made glasses made of a bottle, and also details of snowshoes, rifle cartridges dating back to 1910-1911, a cup, a knife and parts of a bucket. All these subjects are mentioned in Albanov`s diary. These findings allow us to conclude that they belonged to Pavel Smirennikov, one of the four missing members of the crew."
One more finding supports this conclusion: pages from a diary dating back to 1913 which narrates the life onboard St. Anna. The author of the notes has not been identified yet.
Some mysteries surrounding the Brusilov`s expedition remain unsolved: why did the crew divide, with one part following navigator Albanov to the coast and the other remaining on the drifting brig? According to one of the versions, the divide was caused by a quarrel between the captain and the navigator over the only woman onboard-a nurse, Yerminia Zhdanko. The fate of the brig and of those members of the crew who had decided to stay on board is still unknown. Some historians suppose that members of the Brusilov`s crew survived and managed to sail into the open water in 1915 and were attacked by a torpedo from a Nazi submarine.
Due to the lack of evidence the fate of the St. Anna brig is surrounded by many mysteries. So, the participants of the ongoing expedition are trying to bridge this gap. Meanwhile, they have been lucky to find traces of the English and the Norwegian expeditions of 1895 and 1930s.
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