The Thames was a British steamship lost in 1877 while exploring the western part of the Northeast Passage (the sea route east from Europe to northern Russia and East Asia which runs north of Siberia).

[1] With financial backing from Charles Gardiner, Joseph Wiggins – an experienced sea captain who had already twice sailed to the north of Russia, once entering the Kara Sea – purchased The Thames, a 120-ton[note 1] screw steamer, with the intent of surveying the Gulf of Ob and the Yenisei River and returning with profitable cargo.

But she was frozen to the bottom and suffered damage on being freed; headed downriver, she then ran aground on 3 July 1877.

The crew refused Wiggins's proffered schooner as unsafe and returned with him to Yeniseysk and thence home overland.

[2] In 2016, the wreck of The Thames was found in the Yenisei River[note 2] by Nikolay Karelin and Alexander Goncharov,[3] researchers from Siberian State Aerospace University sponsored by the Russian Geographical Society[1][3] and the Russian Fund for the Humanities.