A group of researchers has been searching for traces of one of the most mysterious Russian expeditions in the Arctic for several years. The ice-covered schooner of Georgy Brusilov, the nephew of the famous general and hero of the Civil War, disappeared without a trace in the area of ​​Franz Josef Land in 1914. Only two people from her crew reached the mainland - navigator Albanov and sailor Konrad. Ironically, this same expedition became one of the most famous in Russia after Veniamin Kaverin used its story in the novel “Two Captains.”

After decades of obscurity, the organizers of the expedition “In the Footsteps of Two Captains” managed in recent years to find not only the first artifacts from the St. Anna, but also the remains of one of its crew members. In 2017, they simultaneously discovered the site of the sinking of another ship - the schooner "Eira" of the British expedition of the late 19th century, which no one had been able to find until now. And all this - on a small yacht Alter Ego.

In 2018, polar explorers are preparing to continue searching for “St. Anna,” although, as they themselves admit, everything here depends only on luck. The head of the expedition “In the Footsteps of Two Captains,” Evgeniy Fershter, told the website about how the first finds were made, where the expedition’s archives disappeared, and how to search for a ship whose fate is generally unknown.

- How did the expedition “In the Footsteps of Two Captains” begin?

In 2005, we first came to Franz Josef Land. Our task was to search for the schooner Eira from the Lee-Smith expedition of 1881. Then, unfortunately, we were not able to dive. But we came to a place connected with the history of two, probably, the most tragic expeditions in the history of the Arctic - the expedition of Georgy Brusilov and Sedov. It was then that our interest in this whole topic arose. After all, we have all read “Two Captains” since childhood.

- There is very little information about the fate of “St. Anna” by Georgy Brusilov. What were you basing your search on?

Somewhere in early 1914, the ship, after two years of icy drift, found itself between Franz Josef Land and the North Pole. At this moment, part of the crew, 12 people, led by navigator Albanov, decided to go to the mainland for help. At some point, those who left decided to split into a walking group, which walked along the shore, and a water group, which moved along the water.

Albanov appointed a meeting place for the walking group at Cape Grant of Franz Josef Land. There were four people in this group. They started from Cape Nile. But they never came to Cape Grant: there is a starting point, there is a finishing point that people did not reach.

This seemed to us the most optimal story for searching for traces of the St. Anna team. Because it’s clear here: there are very few travel routes on Franz Josef Land. There is either a beach or a glacier dome that still needs to be climbed. That is, the route was predictable. And after that, we almost spent five years preparing for this story.

The only documentary evidence

- What was the main difficulty?

The hardest thing is to get to those parts. And in 2009, we met a very good person - Oleg Nikolaevich Prodan (in 2016, Oleg Prodan died in the Arctic during the search for “St. Anne”. He led the expedition. In 2010, with the help of helicopters from the FSB of Russia, we got to Franz Land -Joseph. And literally within the first week we carried out such a historical reconstruction - we put ourselves in the place of these people and decided to go the same route that they walked. And within a week we came across the remains of a person. And there were not only remains there - there there were personal belongings and a diary.

The first thing we saw when digging a page out of the glacier were the words “St. Anna.”

The main thing is that Albanov wrote in his diaries: I left a mug, a bucket, a gun, 40 cartridges and the only watch belonging to Smirennikov to the foot party. When we found this man, a mug, a bucket, and a watch were lying next to him. Unfortunately, no guns with cartridges were found.

But there were also some personal things there. The sunglasses, which, according to Albanov, were made by fireman Freyberg on a boat from dark bottle glass - these were gin bottles. There was also a knife there - it was lying right on the stones.

That is, the man apparently died somewhere above and was dragged down by the glacier.

- Was the found diary deciphered?

Yes, all this went to the laboratory of the Russian FSB. They partially deciphered this diary. But there we are mainly talking about life on the schooner and there is not a single word about their passage, which interested us in the first place.

- That is, he didn’t help in the search at all?

It became the only documentary evidence of that time. Because Albanov’s original diaries are lost. When he arrived in St. Petersburg in 1917, he published the book “To the South! To Franz Josef Land." But this is already a printed version. His personal diaries, on which the book was based, disappeared during this time.

- As I understand it, the archives of the expedition, everything related to preparation, have been lost? I read, for example, that Veniamin Kaverin saw some originals when he was working on “Two Captains”, and then that’s all...

According to rumors, all this was in the possession of a certain publisher who emigrated to Paris, and after his death, it seems that the house, along with all the documents, burned down.

“Traces of “St. Anna” basically do not exist.”

- Do you know who the person was whose remains you found on the glacier?

Unfortunately, his identity could not be established. In 2011, as a continuation of the expedition, we took Viktor Nikolaevich Zvyagin. This is one of the main forensic experts in Russia, who also identified the royal family (Professor Zvyagin also confirmed that the body discovered in Berlin at the end of the war belonged to Hitler, and recreated the image of Bering according to anthropologists. All finds were transferred to him, to the center of forensic medicine examination The remains were collected almost entirely, but, unfortunately, there was a missing skull.

- What about genetic testing?

We tried to find relatives, descendants of each of the four who walked along the shore. They even announced a search through the “Wait for Me” program. Relatives appeared, but obviously they were all wrong. Now his remains are still with Zvyagin, but he has finished working with them.

Now we are discussing the issue of burial. If we succeed, we will do it next year.

- Have there been any other traces of the schooner in recent years?

In principle, traces of “St. Anna” do not exist at the moment, so everything here is very complicated with search technology. One of the modern researchers wrote that somewhere in a German town in a port tavern there is almost a steering wheel or a life preserver hanging on the wall with the inscription “St. Anne”. And the owner of the zucchini tells everyone that his father, a German, brought them.

Allegedly, during the Second World War, almost when they were chasing our convoys, somewhere in the very north the Germans came across a ship frozen in the ice, and from there his dad brought all this as a souvenir. But this story is also unverified. Some of our people even visited this city and tried to find this place, but never found anything.

- How then did you build your search after the 2010 finds?

The schooner was last seen between Franz Josef Land and the North Pole. Albanov, in addition to his diary, also brought extracts of entries from the ship’s log, which contained the last coordinates of the ship.

So Oleg Prodan found three or four radio beacons, they were dropped by helicopters exactly at the point where the schooner was last seen, and then they followed the movements using navigators, because it was unlikely that the current there had changed too much.

And suddenly it turned out that the radio beacons had been spinning in the area of ​​Franz Josef Land for almost a year. They were carried no further. And one of the buoys ended up stuck somewhere between the islands of the archipelago.

Therefore, there is a possibility that the “St. Anna” remained drifting in the area of ​​​​the northern tip of Franz Josef Land

And last year, in 2017, we had an expedition towards Franz Josef Land on our small yacht, we dedicated it to the memory of Oleg Prodan. Among other things, we set ourselves the task of reaching the area where the last radio beacon appeared and trying to find traces of the schooner. Any. The wreckage of a ship, traces of human presence - because if the ship had washed ashore, people would probably have gone ashore. Unfortunately, the ice conditions were very bad and we were unable to get to the north. This year we may have better luck.

- By the way, about the yacht. Was she involved in the search from the very beginning?

No, the yacht first joined the expedition in 2012. Then I went in 2015 and 2016.

If Oscars were given for real adventures, then the story of the polar schooner “St. Anna” would probably receive no less awards than the sensational film about the Titanic. Moreover, the dramatic events unfolded among approximately the same ice and icebergs.
In the ill-fated year of the death of the largest liner in the world, a small sailing schooner, the former hunting vessel “St. Anna”, set off towards the ice and the unknown.
The head of the expedition on the St. Anna, Lieutenant of the Russian Navy Georgy Lvovich Brusilov, was the son of the famous admiral, and in addition, he was the nephew of the famous commander of the First World War, General A.A. Brusilov (everyone knows the “Brusilov breakthrough”), that is, he was, one might say, a hereditary military man.
At first the schooner was called “Nyugyurt”, then “Pandora”. Brusilov liked the ship, despite the ominous name, and the American government happily agreed to sell it for the needs of the expedition.

She was faced with a difficult task even for a modern nuclear-powered ship - to travel the northern sea route from St. Petersburg (then from Aleksandrovsk-on-Murman) to Vladivostok. The dangerous and heavy cross of such an enterprise was shouldered by a 28-year-old officer of the Imperial Navy, Lieutenant Georgy Brusilov. He knew firsthand about the Arctic, the ship was adapted to compress ice fields, and there were enough supplies for several winterings.
Maybe that’s why Georgy Lvovich risked taking his distant relative Erminia Zhdanko on this campaign (a number of sources write Ereminia). However, it's not that simple...
One could look at her as an extravagant general’s daughter, who, out of whim, tagged along with the expedition, if one did not know the character of this 20-year-old Cossack girl. At the age of fourteen, she almost went to her father in Port Arthur to defend the fortress with him. Having learned that a distant relative of the family, Georgy Brusilov, had started an unprecedented voyage with hunting all the way across the Arctic Ocean, Erminia begged Brusilov to take her at least around Scandinavia to Aleksandrovsk-on-Murman (now Polyarny).

In the Ekaterininskaya harbor - the last stronghold of civilization on the upcoming journey - it turned out that several crew members had escaped from the schooner, anticipating a disastrous voyage, and Lieutenant Andreev, Brusilov’s childhood friend, did not arrive on the St. Anna at the appointed time. The girl wrote to her parents in her hearts: “I saw this Andreev at St. Anna in St. Petersburg. And somehow I immediately felt distrust and antipathy... The scientist Sevastyanov and the doctor were supposed to come to Aleksandrovsk with Andreev, but suddenly, on the eve of departure, it turned out that “mommy didn’t allow him,” but he simply chickened out... Meanwhile, when Almost all of Russia knows about the expedition, we can’t allow nothing to work out... We have a large first aid kit, but there is no medical assistance, except for the sailor, who was once a company paramedic. All this made such a depressing impression on me that I decided to do what I could, and in general I felt that if I, too, ran away, like everyone else, I would never forgive myself for this.” Such are the motives, very far from the impulse of an eccentric young lady. Erminia completed medical courses (at that time they were called “Samaritan”) and therefore considered it her professional duty to accompany the crew of the St. Anna as a doctor. In addition, she was so up to date with all the affairs of the expedition that she even contributed two hundred rubles from her modest personal funds to the common share. Nevertheless, Brusilov was very doubtful whether to take the girl with him. Everything was decided by a telegram that came from General Zhdanko in response to his daughter’s request to allow her to go on a schooner: “I don’t sympathize with the trip to Vladivostok. Decide yourself". She decided...

Did Mimka know what her name was at home, what she was dooming herself to? I guessed something after spending a month sailing in polar waters on a wooden sailing ship among ordinary men who, like all sailors, were not shy in their expressions. But could she imagine all the hardships of wintering in bound ice? And not just one... “St. Anna”, having reached the Yamal Peninsula, froze into a large ice field, which was torn away from the fast ice by a strong south wind. A slow but steady drift to the north began. Two years of ice captivity, by the beginning of 1914 the schooner had washed up north of Franz Josef Land.

Already during the first winter, the lighting kerosene ran out. They burned seal fat in bowls... Eternal dampness, ineradicable cold, endless darkness of the polar night, mold on everything - on pillows, clothes, food, vitamin deficiencies, diseases... The light from the smokehouses illuminated the space within a radius of half a meter, everything else was drowned in darkness . Frost and ice glistened in the corners of the cabins - these were the cleanest corners. But people have already stopped noticing mold, dampness, and soot... “Our poor young lady, now if you blush, it won’t be visible under the soot covering your face!” - joked V. Albanov, who had not yet lost the ability to joke. The strongest men got sick, gave up, became capricious, quarreled, shouted obscenities, got involved in fights... But she endured. (Only women can fully understand the incredible difficulty of such a life for a woman!) Moreover, she consoled others, exhorted, and treated. And she also played the piano for them in the wardroom. She played the most tender chords to the roar of breaking ice and the rustle of frost falling from frozen yards.... One of the two surviving members of the expedition, A.E. Conrad, spoke of her this way: “We all loved and idolized our doctor, but she gave no preference to anyone . She was a strong woman, the idol of the entire crew. She was a true friend, of rare kindness, intelligence and tact...” We also know from the diary of navigator Valery Albanov what a kind angel Erminia was for the team. He, and even the sailor Conrad, were lucky to escape from the icy hell. After a major quarrel with Lieutenant Brusilov, Albanov, along with several volunteers, left the schooner across the ice to the mainland. Erminia also had a chance to escape together with the navigator. But she, obeying her medical duty and the choice of her heart, remained with the sick lieutenant and the sick sailors. No matter what they gossip about her, she fulfilled the Hippocratic oath to the highest standards. Albanov was the last one to bring news of “St. Anna” in 1913... What happened then? The schooner forever disappeared into the realm of legends, conjectures and legends... For eight decades, Arctic historians, scientists, polar pilots and all kinds of analysts have been and are puzzling over what could have happened to the ship and the people of Lieutenant Brusilov, frozen in the ice. Dozens of hypotheses and theories...

Much has been written about who was the prototype of Captain Tatarinov from the famous story “Two Captains”. Both Sedov and Rusanov can be considered him, but still the most similarities are with Brusilov. In the novel, the ship was called “St. Mary” (isn’t it an analogy with “St. Anna?) Ivan Tatarinov sends navigator Klimov and 13 sailors to search for land. Navigator Klimov, exactly like the real navigator Albanov, with one sailor reached Cape Flora, where he was met by the expedition on the ship "St. Foka". However, unlike the literary Klimov, who soon died in the hospital, Albanov was taken to land not diaries, like Kaverin's, but the ship's journal "St. Anna", on the basis of which valuable data were obtained about the nature of the northern part of the Kara Sea, a previously unexplored region of the Arctic - about underwater terrain, sea currents, ice drift, and meteorological regime. Nansen later used them. In addition, scientists, studying drift data, came to the conclusion about the existence of an unknown land between 78 degrees and 80 degrees north latitude. In 1930, an island was actually discovered there. Captain Tatarinov also discovered an island, which he called “Mary’s Land”.

So what happened to "St. Anne"?
The fate of the comrades left on the schooner tormented Albanov’s heart throughout his short life. So, when A.V. Kolchak became the Supreme Ruler of Siberia and the Far East, the navigator, who had once participated in the same expedition with him, went to Omsk. And there is an assumption that he seemed to have managed to convince Kolchak to organize a search for “St. Anna.” Evil fate intervened here too: on the way back, Valerian Ivanovich died.
But why did he still hope to find comrades? According to his calculations, there should have been enough food on the ship until the end of 1915. And then the “Saint Anne” could have been carried out to the Greenland Sea and dragged to the south, or to the east coast of Greenland. “Is there something waiting for you, “Saint Anna”? Will you descend on your native element - water, will you spread your wide white wings and joyfully fly across the deep sea to the distant warm south from the kingdom of death to life, where your wounds will be healed.
And everything you experienced in the far north will seem like just a heavy dream?..
Or on a cold, stormy, polar night, when a blizzard is howling all around, when neither the moon, nor the stars, nor the northern lights are visible, you will suddenly be rudely awakened from your sleep by a terrible crash, an angry squeal, hissing and shuddering of your hitherto calm bed ; Will your masts, topmasts and yards fly down with a roar, breaking themselves and breaking everything on the deck? - Albanov wrote in his notes,

A group of officers of the expedition ship "Vaigach". In the center of the first row is Captain 2nd Rank Alexander Kolchak. Behind him, second from the right, is Lieutenant Georgy Brusilov. 1909

Recently, a very interesting document was discovered in the materials of the IACE (International Arctic Complex Expedition).
“To the Head of the Water District of the Arkhangelsk Port
Hydrograph Corps of Lieutenant Karyagin
Report
“I inform your Highness that on February 2nd, during my business trip to study ice in the White Sea, at the Patrakeevsky Volost administration I saw a bottle with a note embedded in it, found by one of the peasants of this volost during fishing at Cape Kuiskago in the first place. dates of January this year. A lemonade bottle with a round bottom / the kind you can only find on steamships / it was tightly sealed, so that the note written in ink on a half-sheet of ordinary letter paper was completely preserved.
The contents of the note are as follows: “In the hope of never seeing Russia again, we part with our lives with honor.
Team
My last greetings from the strip of eternal ice Brusilov
February 19, 1913."
The first part of the note was written with a loose hand, the second in a brisk handwriting. On my advice, the contents of this note were communicated by the volost administration to Mr. Arkhangelsk Governor with the first outgoing mail.
Original signed: Lieutenant Karyagin. 15th February 1915
The city of Arkhangelsk."

This note in the bottle is a complete mystery. How could a bottle with a note end up in the White Sea, near Cape Kuisky, very close to Arkhangelsk, where it was found in early January 1915? After all, if the bottle was thrown onto the ice on February 19, 1913, then at that time the schooner was drifting due north, at a speed of 2-3 knots per day.
Whether G. Brusilov himself or someone else wrote this bottle note, it will be possible to say if the original of this note is ever found. To do this, you need to delve into the archives of the Arkhangelsk port, hoping for a miracle that it was preserved there. (http://backup.flot.com/publications...saintanna/7.htm
But what really happened to those remaining on the St. Anna”, who never came to Vladivostok? Only the polar night knows the secret of the ship and its wayward and brave “passenger” Erminia Zhdanko.
In 1953, a cape on Bruce Island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago was named after Erminia Zhdanko.

However, hope, as we know, is the last to die. The most optimistic version says that in 1928 Erminia and Brusilov came to Riga to visit their relatives. ... A postcard arrived in Moscow from Riga, which announced the arrival of Erminia along with her ten-year-old son. She married Georgy Brusilov and lived with him in France. According to researchers P. Novokshonov and D. Alekseev, “St. Anna” fell into a cyclic drift of polar ice, and in the spring of 1915 the schooner washed up in the clear waters of the North Atlantic. The part of the crew remaining on board had every chance of surviving the second winter. There was enough food, and animals could be caught as they drifted. But the sailors did not have a radio, and they did not know that a world war was in full swing in the ocean. Even having managed to escape from ice captivity, the schooner could have died from a torpedo or shells from a German submarine while trying to exit through the Denmark Strait into the Atlantic Ocean. German submarines did not disdain any prey, including sailboats. They surfaced, took the captain with the ship's documents, gave the crew the opportunity to board the boats and sank the ship. It is very likely that this is exactly what the Germans did with the “St. Anna”, sailing under the Russian flag. Only they took the only woman along with the captain. It is unlikely that the “SvyatoAnnets”, exhausted by two winterings, were able to row to the nearest land. Any storm wave could be their last. But the submariners had to deliver two prisoners to the base. Brusilov, as an officer of the Russian fleet, was subject to detention in the camp. Herminia was to be interned until the end of the war. It turns out that both were released only in November 1918. What could they do? Return to Red Russia, where officers were shot left and right? And the general’s daughter would hardly have fared well in Bolshevik Moscow... They had a very healthy chance in life: to go to France, where even before the revolution lived the uncle of Georgy Brusilov, the same one with whose money the “Saint Anna” was purchased and equipped. . And they, presumably, did it. Apparently, in the same year, 18, they got married. A son could have been born at that time... And even though skeptics believe that it was a completely different Erminia Brusilova, I so want to believe in a miracle.

A few years before his death, Georgy Sedov wrote the brochure “Women’s Right to the Sea.” Yerminia Zhdanko confirmed the theoretical calculations of the polar pioneer. No matter how her fate turns out (we sincerely hope for a happy ending to the Arctic drama), we all owe the heroine of these lines a fair amount. The streets with her name in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Polyarny are in debt. They owed money to the motor ship "Erminia Zhdanko", a personal scholarship to medical institutes, memorial plaques, pages in textbooks, postage stamps, table medals... True, in the inaccessible spurs of the forbidden Novaya Zemlya there is Cape Erminia and the ice dome of Brusilov. But this is more their merit than ours.
(Used article by Nikolai Cherkashin
http://www.unbelievable.su/articles.php?id=389, Albanov's diaries http://libes.ru/255799.read?page=9
materials from the sites http://diksonshkola.narod.ru/PageRo...ina/Pomnit.html

The novel by the Swiss explorer and writer Rene Gouzi “In the Polar Ice,” published in 1928 in Leningrad by the publishing house “Around the World,” describes the drift of the sailing schooner “Elvira” in the ice from the perspective of nurse Yvonne Cherpentier. The novel, in the form of a diary, tells about the departure of part of the crew led by the navigator and the death of those remaining from hunger and disease.

Quite recently, a book by the young writer Evgenia Bardina “Legendary Names” was published. Georgy Lvovich Brusilov. The Mystery of Two Captains”, recognized as “Best Literary Debut” in 2010.

And finally, in 2010, the remains of the same Albanov group that went in search of land were found.
http://www.1tv.ru/news/world/158968

About the search for traces of the expedition in this film.

Who among us did not read Veniamin Karenin’s novel “Two Captains” as a child? With bated breath we followed the amazing story of Sanya Grigoriev. Forgetting to do their homework, they read page after page, and the words they liked: “Fight and search, find and not give up” - became the motto of many for the rest of their lives. Little could I have thought that more than thirty years after I read the book, I would touch this story myself. And not fictional, but the real one...
Last year, having met the legendary captain of the yacht “Apostol Andrey” Nikolai Litau, I unexpectedly received an offer to go with him to the Arctic. But then I also had to go to the northern latitudes on the R/V “Mikhail Somov”. With deep regret I had to refuse, but with hope I asked to get in touch if they suddenly wanted to see me on board the yacht next year...

And last winter, Nikolai Litau invited me to join the expedition on the yacht “Apostle Andrey” in the summer of 2014. The goal of the expedition is to follow the route of the schooner “St. Anna”, which disappeared without a trace in the ice of the Arctic Ocean, to visit memorable places of famous polar explorers on the Franz Josef Land archipelago and, if you’re lucky, to discover artifacts that were centuries old. After all, it was a hundred years ago that the main group of people who left the schooner “St. Anna” died on the archipelago. Of the entire crew, two survived - sailor Konrad and navigator Albanov. They were taken from Franz Josef Land by another polar expedition - Georgy Sedov. Much has been written about this, but for a whole century it has not been possible to get one iota closer to the solution to the death of the schooner and crew.

Lost in the ice

July 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the start of the polar expedition of Lieutenant Georgy Brusilov on the schooner “St. Anna,” which disappeared without a trace in the Arctic ice in 1914. This expedition, like two other Russian polar expeditions - G. Ya. Sedov and V. A. Rusanov - equipped with it at the same time, was a consequence of the unusually increased interest in the Arctic and the Earth's poles throughout the world at the beginning of the 20th century.
This interest began with the famous drift in the ice of the Arctic Ocean by Fridtjof Nansen on the ship Fram. Then the famous trips to the North and South Poles of Robert Peary, Roald Amundsen, Robert Scott.

Lieutenant Georgy Brusilov on the schooner "St. Anna" leaves St. Petersburg. The task of the expedition is to sail, for the first time under the Russian flag, across the Arctic Ocean from Arkhangelsk to Vladivostok in one navigation and prove the possibility of regular navigation in Arctic waters, to conduct constant hydrometeorological observations along the entire route...
The outcome of all three Russian expeditions was influenced by the unusually difficult ice conditions of 1912–1913. Thus, in the summer of 1912, northern winds prevailed, driving the ice of the Kara Sea to the south and forming large expanses of clean water in its northern part. Through these spaces, Rusanov’s expedition on the “Hercules” managed to penetrate from the north of Novaya Zemlya far to the east to the shores of Taimyr, and in the south “St. Anna” was able to advance only to Yamal. When the southern monsoon winds that usually prevailed here blew in the winter of 1912–1913, the ice of the Kara Sea, which had accumulated in the south over the summer, began a rapid drift to the north, filling last year’s rarefaction. This explains the unusually fast drift of the “St. Anna” to the north, which determined her tragic fate.

The schooner "St. Anna" before sailing

But this will become known much later, and in the summer of 1912, sailors left the northern ports of Russia, full of bright hopes. It must be said that “St. Anna” was much better equipped than the other two Russian expeditions of that time, not to mention the fact that the ship was built specifically for ice navigation. Despite the fact that “Saint Anna” had already worked in the ice more than once and was “in years,” she did not look old. The comfortable cabins were heated by steam, and there were two harpoon guns in the bow. “The ship is perfectly adapted to resist ice pressure and, in the event of the last extreme, can be thrown onto the surface of the ice,” the Novoye Vremya newspaper wrote with delight.
The route of the expedition on the "St. Anna" was supposed to be as follows: from St. Petersburg, around Scandinavia and the North Cape, three or four days stop in Arkhangelsk, then to the Kara Sea, rounding the Yamal Peninsula and Cape Chelyuskin, and, if this succeeds, wintering at the mouth of the Khatanga River , then along the coast of Siberia to the Bering Strait...
On July 28 (August 10), 1912, “Saint Anna” left St. Petersburg. Rounding Scandinavia, she called at Danish and Norwegian ports to purchase missing whaling equipment and excursions for passengers taken on a very comfortable ship as tourists to the first Russian port. And only on August 28 (September 10) “St. Anna” left the Ekaterininskaya harbor of Alexandrov-on-Murman and headed for the Yugorsky Shar - a kind of gateway to the Kara Sea. At 6 o'clock in the morning on September 4, 1912, having traveled a short distance along the Yugorsky Shar, the schooner "St. Anna", despite the extremely unfavorable ice conditions, entered the Kara Sea. And from that time on, all contact with Brusilov’s expedition was lost. Now they could only rely on themselves... In October 1912, the “Saint Anna” was covered in ice in the southern part of the Kara Sea, off the coast of Yamal. The northward drift continued throughout 1913.
“Saint Anna” did not come to Vladivostok a year later, that is, in 1913, or in subsequent years. In the spring of 1914, when the schooner was already north of Franz Josef Land, part of the crew, led by navigator Valerian Albanov, left the ship.

Cape Flora (FZL archipelago)

This difficult three-month journey through drifting ice is described in Albanov’s famous diary and is rightly equated to a feat. Of the eleven people, two reached Franz Josef Land. Albanov delivered an extract from the ship's log of the St. Anna.
Materials about the ship's one-and-a-half-year drift made it possible to identify some patterns of ice movement in the still completely unexplored Kara Sea. The fate of “St. Anne” is one of the most complex mysteries in the history of domestic polar research, and although the chances of establishing the truth have diminished over the years, the mystery of the disappearance of this “Arctic Flying Dutchman” continues to excite people’s minds and gives rise to beautiful legends.

The Arctic knows how to keep its secrets

Several agonizing months of waiting and preparations are left behind. During this time, I visited many remote places in the Arkhangelsk region, Karelia, Komi and the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, but I devoted every free minute to searching for information about Georgy Brusilov’s expedition.

I contacted the Museum of the Arctic and Antarctic in St. Petersburg, where they kindly provided me with copies of extracts from the ship’s log of the schooner “St. Anna” and materials from hydrometeorological observations.
And recently I met with the director of the Onezhskoye Pomorie National Park, chairman of the Living Nature club Oleg Prodan, who was searching for traces of the presence and probable place of death of the missing group of Brusilov’s expedition, the very same Around the World: One-Way Ticket (Ekaterinburg)
, which left the ship in April 1914 and moved towards the Franz Josef Land archipelago. – Oleg Leonidovich, we are going to the Arctic along the route of the schooner “St. Anna”, please tell us how you prepared for the search for Albanov’s dead group.
- Preparation for the expedition took five years and was very painstaking. We literally read every line of the diary of Valerian Albanov, the navigator of the schooner “St. Anna”, studied photographs of that time, compared them with more modern ones, tried to understand what was happening on the island where we were going to look for traces of the missing group. – A lot has been written about the finds you discovered on George’s Land. What do you think was the most valuable? – In my opinion, all the artifacts that we transferred to the exhibition of the Arkhangelsk Museum of Local Lore are unique. Where the remains of an unknown person were found, they installed a cross and a memorial plaque, without names yet. But the main mystery of this story remains unsolved: where did the schooner “St. Anna” perish and where are the remains of the crew members, and most importantly, the leader of the expedition, Georgy Brusilov, now located? They will search, but it is already clear: it will not be possible to quickly find answers to these questions. The Arctic knows how to keep its secrets.
- Last year you once again visited the Arctic. Was this a sequel to The Expedition of Two Captains? – Just in April 1914, navigator Albanov and his companions left the St. Anna. Albanov’s diaries and an extract from the ship’s log indicated the coordinates of the schooner on which it was last seen.

Oleg Prodan installs radio navigation buoys

So we came up with the idea of ​​​​using modern methods of studying currents - placing radio navigation buoys at the coordinates of St. Anna and tracking where they will ultimately be carried.
- And what is the result? “Now you’ll be surprised,” Oleg Leonidovich mysteriously told me.
And so we study the buoy tracks together. What I saw on the monitor screen was amazing.
- It turns out that “St. Anna” fell into a circular current and moved in a circle from 82 to 84 degrees north latitude near the Franz Josef Land archipelago? So, the famous polar navigator Valentin Akkuratov was right when he wrote about this in his diaries? – I exclaimed.

From the memoirs of V. I. Akkuratov:
“...We climbed on an all-terrain vehicle along the glacier up to the dome. I looked at the sea by chance, and there in the ice, about three miles from the coast, past Teplitz Bay Bay, there was a sailing ship. Frozen into ice. Three masts, yards torn off. It can be seen that it has been in the ice for a long time! In all outlines - “St. Anna”. I pointed to the ship, and everyone, interrupting each other, began to shout: “St. Anna”! "Saint Anna"! We turned back, rushed to the plane, and began to warm up the engine. But for now, this and that - the ship was covered with fog, and gradually it crept onto the shore... The fog cleared only after two weeks. The wind had driven the ice away somewhere, the sea was clear - there was no ship. We flew around within a radius of one hundred kilometers, but to no avail... But for some reason no one had any doubt that this was “St. Anna”. Let’s say I could have had a hallucination, but it couldn’t have happened to everyone!..”
“I am inclined to believe the memories of Valentin Ivanovich, and it seems to me that the remains of the schooner should be looked for somewhere in the area of ​​​​Rudolph Island or the White Earth group of islands,” Oleg Prodan summed up our conversation. How I want to believe that “Saint Anna”, sprinkled with snow, in garlands of frost on the yards, is still making its way in the ice of the Arctic Ocean...

Yacht "Apostle Andrew" among the expanses of the Arctic Ocean

And that the day will come when one of the polar explorers will one day rise to her deck and open the frozen door of the icy captain’s cabin, where the ship’s log, not decayed in the eternal cold, like a book of destinies, will reveal to us the fate of the thirteen Brusilovites remaining on board!

P.S. Read the continuation in the reports "Call of the High Latitudes"

Legends and reflections on the fate of “St. Anna”

1. How to explain the silence of sailor A. Conrad?

This silence is remarkably reminiscent of the silence of Zappi, one of the members of Umberto Nobile’s 1928 polar expedition, who in the group, together with Malmgren and Mariano, left the ice camp after the crash of the airship, hoping to get to Spitsbergen, and then he and Mariano were rescued by the icebreaker Krasin "

A. Conrad

After the rescue, Tsappi remained silent until the end of his life about their relationship in the group and the fate of the third member of the group, Malmgren.

And Tsappi, who was in relatively normal physical condition at the time of the rescue, was wearing a watch and part of the clothes of the frostbitten and exhausted Mariano.

Perhaps the life Albanov gave to Conrad forced him to remain silent?

But this is just a guess.

2. Why did Brusilov and the rest of the crew of the St. Anna” didn’t leave with Albanov?

Another one of the mysteries, the answer to which could be in letters that never reached the recipients.

Maybe this was the reason for the conflict between G. Brusilov and V. Albanov?

Hoping that sooner or later the ship would emerge into clear water, Brusilov was categorically against the ice voyage.

Albanov, as an experienced polar navigator, understood that their only salvation was to leave the ship as soon as possible, while Franz Josef Land was relatively close.

Probably, Brusilov was against the campaign for the reason that he would then have to report to his relatives who financed the expedition for the lost ship and the failed expedition.

But Albanov left without leaving his comrades to their fate; he hoped to return with help.

3. Love triangle

It was suggested that Erminia Zhdanko became the cause of discord between the captain and the navigator. Maybe a love triangle has formed between them? Maybe, having fallen in love with Albanov, Zhdanko, being the ship’s doctor, on principle, out of a sense of medical duty, remained with the still ill Brusilov and the crew on the doomed ship?

Unconfirmed information flashed that Erminia Zhdanko gave Albanov a package before he left and asked him to send it to the person dearest to her on the mainland; the address was on the inner envelope.

And when Albanov, having escaped, opened the package, it turned out that the letter was addressed to him...

But there is no evidence of this - they left with Albanov’s death.

Recalls the polar avishturman V.I. Akkuratov:

“I knew Alexander Conrad. In the thirties he sailed on the ships of the Sovtorgflot. Stern and withdrawn, he reluctantly, with inner pain, recalled his ice odyssey. Speaking sparingly but warmly about Albanov, Conrad flatly refused to say anything about Brusilov or his attitude towards his navigator. After my cautious question about what connected their commander with Erminia Zhdanko, he was silent for a long time, and then quietly said:

“We all loved and idolized our doctor, but she did not give preference to anyone. She was a strong woman, the idol of the entire crew. She was a true friend, of rare kindness, intelligence and tact...

“Please don’t ask anything else!”

4. Arctic Flying Dutchman

"St. Anna” - like the Arctic “flying Dutchman”, with icy masts and yards, covered in snow, continues its drift in the ice along the great Arctic circle for about 100 years.

Recently, in the materials of the IACE (International Arctic Complex Expedition), I discovered a very interesting document.

Here is the text of this document (spelling preserved):

“To the Head of the Water District of the Arkhangelsk Port
Hydrograph Corps of Lieutenant Karyagin

Report

I inform Your Highness that on February 2nd, during my business trip to study ice in the White Sea, at the Patrakeevsky Volost Administration I saw a bottle with a note embedded in it, found by one of the peasants of this volost during fishing near Cape Kuiskago in the early days January of this year. A lemonade bottle with a round bottom / the kind you can only find on steamships / it was tightly sealed, so that the note written in ink on a half-sheet of ordinary letter paper was completely preserved.

Team
My last greetings from the strip of eternal ice Brusilov
February 19, 1913."

The first part of the note was written with a loose hand, the second in a brisk handwriting. On my advice, the contents of this note were communicated by the volost administration to Mr. Arkhangelsk Governor with the first outgoing mail.

Original signed: Lieutenant Karyagin.
With authenticity it is true:
For I.D. Flag Officer, Art. Leith. de France.
№10.
15th February 1915
The city of Arkhangelsk."

Let's analyze this document.

As we can see, the note was signed by G. Brusilov on February 19, 1913. By this time, the schooner had already been drifting on ice for 4 months and had reached, in accordance with the entries in the ship’s log on February 12, 1913, a point with coordinates: 76 degrees 31 minutes north latitude and 77 degrees 25 minutes east longitude. The schooner was in the Kara Sea, approximately at the latitude of Cape Zhelaniya - the northernmost point of Novaya Zemlya.

Copy of Lieutenant Karyagin's report

Copy of Lieutenant Karyagin's report

This note in the bottle is a complete mystery. How could a bottle with a note end up in the White Sea, near Cape Kuisky, very close to Arkhangelsk, where it was found in early January 1915?

After all, if the bottle was thrown onto the ice on February 19, 1913, then at that time the schooner was drifting due north, at a speed of 2-3 knots per day.

There is an entry in the ship’s log dated February 18, 1913, where Brusilov writes: “... my health is also not good, I’m lying in a bed, I can’t move or walk at all... I often start talking, but now I’m a little better..., they were afraid that I wouldn’t get up and They made an inventory of all the documents kept by me.”

But the decadent and farewell tone of Brusilov’s note somehow does not agree with this entry in the ship’s log, where he writes that he felt better.

Whether G. Brusilov himself or someone else wrote this bottle note, it will be possible to say if the original of this note is ever found. To do this, you need to delve into the archives of the Arkhangelsk port, hoping for a miracle that it was preserved there.

The ice drift of the schooner continued until April 1914, until the departure of Albanov’s group, when the schooner had already reached 83 degrees north latitude, and then continued further.

This bottle with a note, if it was thrown onto the ice near the schooner on February 19, 1913, was supposed to drift on the ice floe along with the schooner to the north also until April 1914 and further until the schooner comes out of ice captivity into clean water, and the bottle will be driven south by the current or the wind.

Having accepted the reality of the existence of this bottle with a note, we can assume that “St. Anna,” if she was not crushed by ice or destroyed by fire, by the end of summer or mid-autumn of 1914 was able to emerge from ice captivity into clean water northwest of the Earth Franz Joseph.

This was much earlier than the summer of 1915 - the date that Brusilov and Albanov expected, and a bottle with a note after three to four months, in January 1915, was able to end up in the White Sea, near Cape Kuisky.

The complex system of surface and deep currents existing in the Barents Sea, in which cold currents from the Arctic basin (with an average speed of about 50 cm/sec) are directed mainly south of Franz Josef Land, as well as from the meridians of the Kola Bay Part of the waters of the coastal branch of the North Cape Current deviates to the southeast, moves along the coast of the Kola Peninsula and goes into the White Sea. This allows our assumption.

In general, this note in the bottle gave rise to even more mysteries, to which, unfortunately, there are no answers yet.

If we assume that “St. Anna” came out into the open, then where did it go?

Maybe Brusilov left the schooner along with the crew members and headed to Franz Josef Land or Spitsbergen, and the schooner really wanders in the Arctic like the “flying Dutchman”?

After all, there are memories of the polar navigator Akkuratov that while wintering on Rudolf Island in 1937-1938. Together with the pilot Mazuruk, they saw a schooner in Teplitz Bay, about three miles from the coast. Three masts, yards torn off. Apparently it has been in the ice for a long time. In all its outlines it is very similar to “St. Anne”. While they rushed to the plane to warm up the engine to fly around the schooner, fog rolled into the bay, which cleared only two weeks later. Mazuruk and Akkuratov flew around everything within a radius of 100 km, but the sea was clear and there was no schooner.

It is impossible not to mention another mystical story associated with E.A. Zhdanko.

In 1928, in Leningrad, the publishing house “Around the World” published the book “In the Polar Ice” (The Diary of Yvonne Cherpentier) as a translation from French by Rene Gouzi.

The story is told on behalf of a participant in the polar expedition on the Elvira ship.

The surnames of the expedition participants are Norwegian, but there is a constant parallel with the expedition “St. Anna":

The ship also left for the Arctic in 1912;

There is also a disagreement on the ship between the captain, whose name is Törnqvist, and the navigator Boström;

Also, the navigator left the schooner for ZFI in April 1914;

Also the next day, three people catch up with them with hot food after a snowstorm;

Also, almost the entire crew suffered from scurvy, etc.

Shortly before Charpentier's death, the last survivor on the schooner sewed the diary into a leather bag with floats and placed it on ice. It was found in the north Atlantic by a Norwegian whaling ship, whose captain gave the diary to the Swiss naturalist R. Guzi.

However, later R. Guzi, in his new book, published in 1931, wrote: “I tried to somehow restore the events that happened with the remaining members of Brusilov’s expedition”….

But some researchers suggest that perhaps E.A. Zhdanko somehow escaped and handed over her diary to R. Guzi for publication with the obligatory condition of presenting it as fiction.

Is it so?..

5. G. Brusilov also decided to leave the ship and go on foot after Albanov’s group?

Recalls polar air navigator V.I. Akkuratov:

“Wintering in 1937/38 on Rudolf Island, when the pilot I.P. and I Mazuruk, after the landing of the Papanins at the North Pole, were left to insure their drift; in the ruins of the sites of the Italian and American expeditions of Duke Amedeus of Abrutz and Baldwin-Fiala, we discovered an unusual find. A lady's patent leather shoe! On the inner kid lining, stamped in gold, there was the inscription: “Supplier to the Court of His Imperial Majesty: St. Petersburg.” There were no women on these expeditions.

Didn't this fashionable shoe belong to Erminia Zhdanko? Maybe Brusilov, knowing about the food reserves on the island, went out to him, then went further south, to Cape Flora, most often visited by ships, but everyone died along the way?

Although this version is hardly justified. It’s hard to believe that on a difficult ice trek, where every gram of excess weight counts, Erminia Zhdanko would take fashionable shoes with her. Although, as they say, the female soul is in darkness.

6. The most romantic version of the fate of “St. Anna"

And, first of all, about the fate of Brusilov and Erminia Zhdanko:

"St. Anna” emerged from icy captivity in 1915. Erminia Zhdanko and G. Brusilov remained alive.

Erminia Zhdanko

Somewhere in the spring or summer of 1915, the schooner emerged from captivity in the ice and was washed out into the waters of the North Atlantic.

Analysis of the laws of ice drift carried out from the Arctic Ocean through the Greenland Sea to the Atlantic confirms the possibility of the schooner reaching clean water.

During this long drift there was no radio on board the schooner, and, therefore, the sailors had no information about what was happening in a world in which the First World War was already underway.

"St. Anna" was carried to the North Atlantic region, where Germany was waging unrestricted submarine warfare. German submarines sank all the ships in a row that they came across in their areas of operation.

If it was not a warship, then the submarine surfaced, they took the captain and the ship's documents with them, the crew was quite often allowed to board the boats, then they sank the ship with a torpedo or shot it from an artillery mount.

They probably could have done this with “St. Anna,” but they took on board the boat, in addition to the lieutenant of the Russian fleet G. Brusilov, also a woman - Erminia Zhdanko...

Seeing the pitiful state of the schooner after its three-year drift, the German submariners, perhaps, did not want to waste a torpedo on it or expend artillery ammunition, believing that it would sink anyway, they left the schooner afloat and left, and “St. Anna continued her free drift.

Team "St. Anna”, transferred to whaleboats, did not dare to switch to the schooner again, fearing that at the next meeting with a German submarine she might simply be sunk without warning.

Given the exhausted state of the crew after the drift, it was unlikely that they could survive on the open sea or reach the shore.

Here's where the fun starts: there are a number of events and facts that, to a certain extent, can confirm the reality of this version, expressed back in 1978 by D. Alekseev and P. Novokshenov.

While in Stralsund, Germany in October 1988, the marine painter N. Cherkashin went with his German friends to the beer cellar “U Hansa”. He talks about this in his book “Adventures of the High Seas”.

On one of the walls of this cellar there was a steering wheel, to which was attached a Russian icon of “St. Anna of Kashin”. The inscription was barely visible on the steering wheel - "...andor...", i.e. part of the name of the ship to which this helm belonged.

The owner of the cellar said that this steering wheel and icon were found by his father, who was fishing in the North Sea immediately after the end of World War II.

In the fall of 1946, his trawler in thick fog almost ran into an abandoned schooner. Having examined this schooner, the fishermen found on it a lot of canned meat and other provisions, which they loaded onto themselves, and the father took this steering wheel and icon from the schooner!

The schooner had no flag or name on board.

Let's go back to 1912.

The schooner “Pandora” was renamed “St. Anna."

When naming the ship a new name, in accordance with traditions, they also presented an icon, which could well be the icon of “St. Anna of Kashin.”

And the erased inscriptions of some letters on the steering wheel can be explained by the usual superstition of sailors who did not want to leave on the schooner the name of a mythical woman who was the embodiment of evil and misfortune for people.

So, perhaps, the “Pandora’s box” that Poincaré mentioned when he met the schooner “St. Anna”, setting out on her tragic voyage, with the hope that the mystery of the schooner’s disappearance can be revealed.

However, this version has one weak link. By the end of its many years of drift, "St. Anna" did not have a sufficient supply of food, especially canned meat.

And if in 1946 German fishermen did not meet “St. Anna,” and another schooner, which once at sea met the deserted “St. Anna,” and someone from her crew of this schooner removed the helm and the icon, and only then she herself was attacked by German submariners and also became abandoned?

After all, the icon and the steering wheel hang on the wall in the beer cellar!

There is evidence from a distant relative of Erminia Zhdanko, Nina Georgievna Molchanyuk from Tallinn, that in 1928 Erminia Zhdanko appeared in Riga, having arrived from somewhere in the south of France, along with her ten-year-old son - a fact to which she herself, due to her early age, did not attach any significance at that time. That she married Georgy Brusilov and lived somewhere in the south of France.

N. Cherkashin, who met with Anatoly Vadimovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky in St. Petersburg, also speaks about this. He informed him, in particular, that a postcard had arrived from Riga to his relatives in Moscow, which announced the arrival of Erminia Zhdanko in Riga in 1928. For obvious reasons, the postcard was not preserved; it was quickly destroyed because... in those years, the OGPU would have questioned former nobles to the fullest extent for their foreign connections.

But there appears to be some confusion here.

They were talking about the possible arrival of another Erminia to Riga, and not “our” Erminia Zhdanko, their distant relative, the daughter of Alexander Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, who was also called Erminia (“Mima”). It is known that she was a pianist and lived in Ljubljana. And she could well come to Riga.

“Our” Erminia Zhdanko was the daughter of Erminia Yuryevna Borozdina from her marriage to Alexander Efimovich Zhdanko. She had two half-sisters - Irina Alexandrovna and Tatyana Alexandrovna from A.M.’s second marriage. Zhdanko with Tamara Iosifovna Dolivo-Dobrovolskaya.

Boris Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky, Tamara Iosifovna’s maternal brother, was the husband of Ksenia Brusilova, sister of Georgy Brusilov.

Boris Osipovich Dolivo-Dobrovolsky was shot in September 1937, and Ksenia Lvovna died in Moscow in 1982.

If we accept the version of D. Alekseev and P. Novokshenov, then the German submariners should have delivered the rescued G. Brusilov and E. Zhdanko to the base.

Lieutenant of the Russian Navy G. Brusilov, according to the then existing situation, as a representative of a state at war with Germany, was to be placed in a prisoner of war camp, and Erminia was to be interned until the end of the war.

They could only be freed at the end of 1918.

And they were faced with a dilemma: G. Brusilov is an officer of the tsarist fleet, Erminia is the daughter of a tsar’s general. They would probably have had a very hard time in the Republic of Soviets, and it is unlikely that they would have survived upon returning here to the situation when former tsarist officers were put against the wall without trial.

Most likely, a completely sensible decision followed - to leave for France, where G. Brusilov’s uncle lived even before the revolution.

Why did the emigrant community hear nothing about the fact that G. Brusilov and A. Zhdanko remained alive and live in France?

The explanation for this can be given as follows: The name of General A.A. Brusilov, due to his service on the side of the Bolsheviks, was far from popular among the Russian emigrants. If not to say that it was anathema.

After all, everyone remembered that A.A. Brusilov refused to lead the forces of resistance to the Bolsheviks when, on October 27, 1917, the first blood was shed in Moscow in the battles of worker detachments and cadets, after which the shelling of the Kremlin began, and then the complete transfer of power into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

The mood of the White émigré community was especially influenced by his appeal to the officers and soldiers of the White Army in 1920, when hundreds of people believed the general’s word of honor, and upon returning to Russia, they ended up in the Cheka.

As it turned out later, the Bolsheviks used the name A.A. in the most vile way. Brusilov in this Appeal to white officers and soldiers, which was distributed in Crimea during the evacuation of Wrangel’s army. He never signed this appeal.

Everyone also remembered that A.A. Brusilov refused, when it was offered to him, to lead the forces of resistance to the Bolsheviks at the end of October 1917, when on October 27, 1917, the first blood was shed in Moscow in the battles of worker detachments and cadets, after which the shelling of the Kremlin began, and then the complete transfer of power into the hands of the Bolsheviks.

All this could well have been the reason that Georgy Brusilov did not want to make his relationship with General Brusilov public.

The death of the schooner and its crew, the complete failure of the planned expedition - all this taken together apparently did not give him peace and forced him to lead a secluded life in some place in France, where they had never heard of this Russian polar expedition and its fate.

G. Brusilov naturally could not know that thanks to the extracts from the ship’s log “St. Anna" Brusilov's expedition turned out to be very productive in scientific and geographical terms.

Thanks to the observations made on the schooner and on the ice voyage, and the documents delivered by Albanov to the land, it was possible to draw up a map of Arctic currents and exclude two non-existent lands from nautical charts: Peterman Land and King Oscar Land. The depths measured by the expedition showed that the continental shelf stretches continuously from Novaya Zemlya to the Franz Josef Archipelago.

A sea depression cutting into the continental shelf was discovered, later called the “St. Anna Trench.”

The existence of the island of Vize was predicted and then discovered.

When analyzing the drift of “St. Anna” Professor V.Yu. Wiese concluded that between 78° and 80° N. sh., where the drift was anomalous, somewhat east of the ship’s path, there should be (at that time unknown) land, which he approximately mapped.

In 1930, an expedition on the icebreaking steamer “Sedov”, in which V.Yu. Wiese actually discovered an island in the indicated place, called Wiese Island.

In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of Fridtjof Nansen:

“Whoever wants to know the human spirit in its noblest struggle against superstition and darkness, let him leaf through the chronicle of Arctic travel, the history of men who, at a time when wintering in the middle of the polar night threatened certain death, nevertheless cheerfully walked with flying banners towards the unknown.”

For more than a century, it has not been possible to unravel the mystery of the unfinished expedition of “St. Anna”.

Four names

A July day in 1867 was marked for the small Welsh town of Pembroke Dock with the launch of another warship created to replenish the British fleet. The sailing-steam schooner was designed according to the Philomel type; a total of 26 vessels were laid down, with design features and a new type.

The new ship was equipped with a steam engine, had one propeller, rigging with sails and four cannons. The military schooner had a displacement of 570 tons and could travel at a speed of 5 knots. The ship was named Newport.

The new ship did not remain in the ranks of the English flotilla for long; less than a year later it was “transferred” to expeditionary status and was appointed captain by George Nares. After which the Newport went to the Mediterranean Sea to carry out work to measure depths during the construction of the Suez Canal. By the way, in November 1869, Newport had the honor of becoming the first ship to pass through the Suez Canal.

A new twist of fate awaited the schooner in 1881; the ship was sold to Sir Alain Young. Previously, the traveler owned a Philomel-class schooner called Pandora, with which he tried to navigate the Northwest Passage in one navigation. And in memory of this event he named the new acquisition “Pandora II”; the schooner became Jung’s personal yacht.

Another owner of the schooner was the Englishman Liburn Popham. The shipowner carried out a number of restoration works and improved the schooner. The hull was strengthened with triple oak plating, and a new steam engine was installed, increasing the ship's speed to 7.5 knots. The updated schooner was named Blencathra.

In 1890, the ship set off for the Yenisei. The crew, under the command of Joseph Wiggins, was busy establishing supply bases for Nansen. Scottish explorer William Bruce traveled on board the Blencathra to Novaya Zemlya. The forty-five-year-old schooner was quite strong and suitable for long journeys. In 1912, researcher Georgy Brusilov saw her. Having paid 20,000 rubles, he gave her a new name - “Saint Anna”.

Last flight

Moored at the Nikolaevsky Bridge in St. Petersburg, “St. Anna” was distinguished by the simplicity and grace of its lines, strong rigging with a large number of sails, and a barrel on the mainmast. Georgy Brusilov dreamed of sailing his ship, with the Russian flag proudly flying, through the Northern Sea Route. Therefore, before sailing, he willingly communicated with journalists, in every possible way attracting public attention to the expedition.

All the newspapers discussed the upcoming trip and praised the strength, protection and equipment of the schooner. They described her experience of sailing in. Also, everyone enthusiastically reprinted the history of the schooner, noting its role in Nansen’s expedition.

And so the “Saint Anna”, after a ceremonial farewell, left the port and set off on its last voyage. During stops, professional hunters board the schooner; the last to take her place is nurse Erminia Zhdanko. takes place as normal, a great mood reigns on the schooner, the crew members even manage to send encouraging letters home.

In October, approaching Yamal, the St. Anna falls into an ice trap. The supplies on board allow us to easily survive for a year and a half, so there was no reason to panic. However, the drifting ice was in no hurry to let go of the schooner, dragging it north. In the spring of 1914, the ship was in the area.

Part of the crew decided to get to land on the ice; the group was led by navigator Albanov. Thirteen people, led by Brusilov, remained on the schooner; they would have had enough food almost until the end of 1915.

Eleven men set out on April 23, which was the last time anyone saw the St. Anne. Three months later, sailors from the ship "St. Foka", passing by Franz Josef Land, took Albanov and sailor Conrad on board.

In search of "Saint Anne"

No innovations and capabilities of the late twentieth century or technology of the twenty-first helped to find the lost ship. The fate of “St. Anna” even after a hundred years haunts us, because it, like others, could have become a monument to brave explorers and sailors.

In 2010, a search expedition landed on Franz Josef Land. The group of enthusiasts working under the “In the Footsteps of Two Captains” program was led by Oleg Prodan. As a result, it was possible to find the remains of an unidentified member of the Brusilov expedition (on the island of St. George), a diary and personal belongings.

Subsequent expeditions to search for the schooner and missing crew members were undertaken in 2011, 2012 and 2013. Several pages from a sailor's diary, presumably belonging to the driver Vladimir Gubanov, and parts of a skeleton were found.

In the spring of 2016, the last expedition was sent to search for the missing schooner. It was assumed that the search expedition would install buoys at the site where the St. Anna began to drift, frozen into the ice, and monitor the movement of ice in the region, thus calculating the possible route of the missing ship.

This idea appeared after studying the archives of the aviation station from Rudolf Island, dating back to 1937. One of the reports reported about an unknown ship captured by ice. However, Oleg Prodan and his team were not destined to solve the mystery of the disappearance of “St. Anna”. Due to bad weather conditions, the helicopter crashed near Bely Island, killing all those on board.

The sea loves to collect trophies and collect ships. Ships of ancient civilizations, medieval armadas, explorers' ships and legendary yachts fell into his traps. Somewhere in its storerooms is stored “Saint Anna”, which did not complete the expedition and took with it all the secrets. But maybe the day will come when new technologies and specialists will still find the remains of the schooner.