New London-Odessa Route.

New York Times 100 years ago today, September 8, 1912:
Sugar to be Brought to England Without Paying Germany.
    ST. PETERSBURG, Aug. 23.— The Mercantile Marine Department of the Russian Ministry of Commerce and Industry contemplates running three steamers of 6,000 tons burden, ten or eleven knot boats, from Odessa to London and Hull from January next year. The vessels are to make either sixteen or twenty-four trips per annum. Roughly speaking, of the total burden of 6,000 tons, two-thirds will be grain, supplementing some 2,000 tons of cold-storage shipments, if sixteen trips be decided on, or 1,000 if twenty-four trips per annum be arranged. A Government subsidy under a contract for fifteen years is an essential feature of the scheme. At the instance of the Ministry of War the ships will be of a type suitable for the conveyance of emigrants or military forces, and fresh-water condensers are specially stipulated for in this connection.
    The Government also intends to establish in Odessa and other Black Sea ports extensive cold-storage accommodations on the most modern principles. The ships used on the new Odessa-London line will be provided with cold-storage fittings for 1,000 tons minimum and 2,000 tons maximum accommodations. The cold-storage shipments will chiefly consist of game, meat, eggs, and butter. The meat export is a long-cherished hope of Russian stock raisers, and there is no beef on the Continent of Europe that can compare in any respect with the famous Caucassian product.
    England is a very large consumer of Russian sugar, but it is brought chiefly from German ports in German ships. The new line, it is estimated, may safely count on conveying 100,000 tons annually of Russian sugar direct to London, thereby cutting out the German middleman to that extent.