Nicholas and Alexandra

crew and knew many of the sailors by their first names. Often a group of ship’s officers was invited to dine at the Imperial table. During the day, the girls wandered the decks unescorted, wearing white blouses and polka-dotted skirts. Conversations and bantering shipboard flirtations sprang up between young officers and the blossoming Grand Duchesses. Even in the winter, when the yacht was laid up for refurbishing, the special bonds of shipboard life held firm. “During the performances of the opera, especially Aida,… sailors from the Imperial yacht Standart would often be called upon to play parts of warriors,” wrote the Tsar’s sister Grand Duchess Olga. “It was a riot to see those tall husky men standing awkwardly on the stage, wearing helmets and sandals and showing their bare, hairy legs. Despite the frantic signals of the producer, they would stare up at us [in the Imperial box] with broad grins.”

When the children were young, each was assigned a sailor whose duty it was to prevent his small charge from toddling overboard. As the children grew older and went ashore to swim, the sailor-nannies went along. At the end of each year’s cruise, the Tsar rewarded these husky seafaring nursemaids by giving each man a gold watch.

Even aboard the Standart, Nicholas was not free of the burdens of office. Although he barred government ministers and police security agents from the decks of the yacht, courier boats from St. Petersburg churned up daily to the foot of the Standart’s ladder, bringing reports and documents. As a further reminder of the presence of its august passenger, the yacht was never without an escort of navy torpedo boats anchored nearby or cruising slowly along the horizon.

At sea, Nicholas worked two days a week. The other five he relaxed. In the morning, he rowed ashore to take long walks through the wild Finnish forests. When the Standart moored near the country estate of a Russian or Finnish nobleman, the owner might awake to find the Tsar at his door asking politely if he might use a court for tennis. Sometimes Nicholas dismissed the gentlemen who accompanied him on these hikes and walked alone with his children, searching the woods for mushrooms or wandering down a beach looking for bright-colored rocks.

Because her sciatica made it difficult for her to move, Alexandra rarely left the yacht. She spent the days peacefully sitting on deck, knitting, doing needlework, writing letters, watching the gulls and the sea. Alone in the lounge, she played Bach, Beethoven and Tchaikovsky at the piano. As they grew older, the girls took turns staying aboard the ship, keeping their mother company. In 1907, when Anna Vyrubova began making these cruises, the two women spent their days sitting in the sun, knitting and talking.

At teatime, the Tsar and the children returned with stories, wildflowers, mosses, cups of berries and pieces of quartz. Tea was served on deck while the ship’s band thumped out marches or the balalaika orchestra strummed Russian folk melodies. Occasionally, the girls acted out skits. Anna Vyrubova recalled the day that the older Imperial yacht, Polar Star, carrying the Dowager Empress, anchored nearby and the girls’ grandmother came on board the Standart for tea and a play. Afterward, Vyrubova saw Marie “sitting on Alexis’s bed talking to him gaily and helping him peel an apple just like any other grandmother.”

The part of the day Alexandra liked best was sunset. As the last slanting rays touched trees, rocks, water and boats with golden light, she sat on deck watching the lowering of the flag and listening to the deep, echoing male voices of the crew singing the Orthodox service of Evening Prayer. Later in the evening, while Nicholas played billiards and smoked with his staff, the Empress read and sewed by lamplight. Everyone went to bed early. By eleven p.m. the waves had rocked them to sleep, and stewards bringing evening tea into the drawing room invariably found the place deserted.

In 1907, the cruise on the Standart ended in near-calamity. The yacht was moving out to sea through a narrow channel while, on deck, the passengers were having afternoon tea. Suddenly, with a shuddering crash, the ship hit a rock. Teacups flew, chairs overturned, the band went sprawling. As water poured into the hull, the ship listed and began to settle. Sirens wailed and lifeboats were lowered. For a moment, the three-year-old Tsarevich was missing, and both parents were distraught until he was located. Then Alexandra herded her children and maids into boats and, with Anna Vyrubova, bustled back to her own stateroom. Stripping sheets from the bed, she tossed jewels, icons and mementoes into a bundle. When she left the yacht, the last woman to depart, she carried this priceless bundle securely in her lap.

Nicholas, meanwhile, stood at the rail supervising the lowering and casting off of the lifeboats. As he did so, he bent over the side every few seconds and looked at the waterline, then consulted a pocket watch he held in his hand. The Tsar explained that he intended to stay aboard to the last, and that he was calculating how many inches a minute the boat was sinking; he estimated that twenty minutes remained. Nevertheless, due to its watertight compartments, the Standart did not sink, and it was later pulled off the rock and repaired. That night the family slept in crowded quarters aboard the navy cruiser Asia. “The Emperor, rather disheveled, brought basins of water to the Empress and me to wash our faces and hands,” said Anna. “The next morning, the Polar Star appeared and we transferred to its more spacious quarters.”

In August 1909, the Standart steamed slowly past the Isle of Wight, carrying the Russian Imperial family on its last visit to England. The Tsar arrived just before Regatta Week, and before the races began, King Edward VII honored Nicholas with a formal review of the Royal Navy. In three lines, the world’s mightiest armada of battleships and dreadnoughts lay at anchor. As the British royal yacht, Victoria and Albert, steamed slowly under the rail of each of these mountains of gray steel, pennants dipped, saluting cannon boomed, bands played “God Save the Tsar” and “God Save the King,” and hundreds of British seamen burst into rippling cheers. On the deck of the yacht, the portly King and his Russian guest, wearing the white uniform of a British admiral, stood at salute.

After the naval review, the sailing races which climaxed the summer social season began. A great fleet of hundreds of yachts lay in the roadstead, their varnished masts gleaming in the sunlight like a forest of golden spars. “Ashore and afloat,” wrote a British observer, “there were dinner parties and balls. Steam launches, with gleaming brass funnels, and slender cutters and gigs, pulled by their crews at the long white oars, plied between the yachts and the Squadron steps. By day, the sails of the racing yachts spread across the blue waters of the Solent like the wings of giant butterflies, by night the riding lights and lanterns gleamed and shone like glow-worms against the onyx water and fireworks burst and spent themselves in the night sky.”

This visit was the only time that Prince Edward, the present Duke of Windsor, met his Russian cousins. Prince Edward, then fifteen, and his younger brother Prince Albert, who became King George VI, were cadets at the Naval College of Osborne, near Cowes on the Isle of Wight. Both British Princes were scheduled to show the Russian party through their school, but, at the last minute, Albert developed a cold which rapidly worsened into whooping cough. Dr. Botkin feared that if Albert passed the disease along to Alexis, the fits of coughing might trigger bleeding. Accordingly, Albert was quarantined.

“[This] was the one and only time I ever saw Tsar Nicholas,” wrote the Duke of Windsor, looking back on the event. “Because of assassination plots … the Imperial government would not risk their Little Father’s life in a great metropolis. Therefore the meeting was set for Cowes on the Isle of Wight, which could be sealed off almost completely. Uncle Nicky came for the regatta with his Empress and their numerous children aboard the Standart. I do remember being astonished at the elaborate police guard thrown around his every movement when I showed him through Osborne College.”

The Empress Alexandra was overjoyed to be back in the land where she had spent the happiest days of her childhood. Pleased with the warm hospitality offered by King Edward, she wrote that “dear Uncle” has “been most kind and attentive.” Less than a year later, “dear Uncle” was dead. His son, King George V, was on the throne and the young Prince Edward became the Prince of Wales.

Every emperor, king and president in Europe trod at one time or another upon the polished decks of the Standart. The Kaiser, whose own 4,000-ton white-and-gold Hohenzollern was slightly smaller than the Standart, openly proclaimed his envy of the Russian yacht. “He said he would have been happy to get it as a present,” Nicholas wrote to Marie after William had come aboard for the first time. In reply, Marie sputtered indignantly, “His joke … was in very doubtful taste. I hope he will not have the cheek to order himself a similar one here [in Denmark]. This really would be the limit, though just like him, with the tact that distinguishes him.”

The Tsar and the Kaiser saw each other for the last time in June 1912, when the two Imperial yachts Standart and Hohenzollern anchored side by side at the