Russian voluntary fleet according to the Dutch newspaper Het nieuws van den dag voor Nederlandsch-Indië dated 13 August 1914

An item referred to the newspaper Straits Times which pointed the existence of the so-called Russian Voluntarily Fleet consisting of merchant ships which immediately could be commissioned as warships and could be play a roll of importance in the [=First World War] which was going on. This fleet was around 35 years ago founded as an act of a patriotism after the war between the Russian and Ottoman empires in 1878 when the sum of 4.000.000 rubles was collected which fund was used to subsidy these merchant ships. This plan meet a huge consent. In the meantime the fund grew to 20.000.000 rubles. Of these fleet were forty ships in the East Asiatic area namely twenty steamships serving between Vladivostok and Shanghai  and around twenty serving between Odessa, Calcutta and Vladivistok. Another fifty served between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea and around twenty between Odessa and St. Petersburg and finally ten between Russian and British harbours. If times of calamity could these ships be manned by officers and sailors of the naval reserve.