page_title: Russian frigate Alexander Nevsky
section_title: Shipwreck
hierarchical_section_title: Russian frigate Alexander Nevsky / Shipwreck
caption_attribution_description: Wreck of the Frigate "Alexander Nevsky" (night view)
context_page_description: Alexander Nevsky was a large screw frigate of the Russian Imperial Navy. The ship was designed as part of a challenge being offered by the Russian Empire to the Royal Navy, but was lost in a shipwreck in 1868 while Grand Duke Alexei, son of Tsar Alexander II, was aboard.
context_section_description: On 25 September 1868, on her way home from a visit to Piraeus, where she had participated in the celebration of Greek King George's wedding to Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, and while carrying Grand Duke Alexei, son of Tsar Alexander II, Alexander Nevsky was wrecked in the North Sea off Thyborøn, a fishing village in Jutland, Denmark.
  The vessel was travelling by sail at that time and both the admiral (who had been responsible for Grand Duke Alexei's naval education) and the ship's captain miscalculated the ship's position due to incorrect drift information recorded in the pilot book. Buffeted by rain, Alexander Nevsky struck a sandbar, and her masts and some of the ship's cannons had to be pitched into the sea to prevent the vessel from immediately capsizing.
  Responding to the ship's distress signal (a gun was fired), the local fishermen poured out into the now becalmed sea and rescued all of the ship's crew, aside from five crewmen who had drowned while attempting to seek help on a lifeboat.
  The warship eventually sank, the wreck settling in roughly 60 feet (20 m) of water, only 300 feet (100 m) from the present coast of Thyborøn. The captain and admiral aboard were convicted of dereliction of duty at a court-martial, but the tsar intervened and pardoned them due to their long service to the fleet.
  Grand Duke Alexei often claimed that he almost drowned when the ship went down, and enjoyed telling the story through the rest of his life.
caption: Wreck of the Alexander Nevsky by artist Alexey Bogolyubov, 1868
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