Georgy Brusilov

The fate of Russian adventurer Georgy Brusilov, whose legendary Arctic expedition vanished in 1912, has been revealed. Explorers discovered his camp complete with skeletons and the perfectly-preserved pages of the sailor's log on Franz Josef Land, Europe's northernmost land mass, in July. Brusilov was trying to forge a route through the ice-choked North-east passage, the elusive Arctic trade route from Asia to the West. Midway into the journey along the Siberian coast, Svyataya Anna, the expedition ship, ran aground on thick ice floes.

The 24-member crew clung to the doomed ship for two winters as it floated ever closer to the North Pole. In the Spring of 1914 a 14 man team left to sledge south to Franz Josef Land. Of those who left the ship, only two survived, one of whom was the navigator Valerian Albanov, who later described the ordeal in The Land of White Death. These formed the basis for Soviet author Veniamin Kaverin's novel Two Captains. More detail about the 2010 can be found here.