“Caucasus and Mercury” Shipping Company

Description

The company was one of Russia’s largest river and maritime shipping companies and was founded in 1859 through the merger of the Volga Shipping Company Mercury and the newly established Caspian Sea Shipping Company. Kavkaz. The “K & M” Company, as it became known, was established with the assistance of the Russian Ministry of Finance and the Caucasian Lieutenant General Duke A.I. Baryatinsky.

The Russian government gave the company the sole right to carry mail, troops, and military cargo, and an annual subsidy of 350.000 roubles, to provide a regular service on the Volga as well as transit in the Black-Sea-Caucasus-Caspian Sea corridor. The company was also granted use of the Astrakhan Military District’s shipyard in 1878.

The K&M was the first to launch iron barges on the Volga River and to build and equip wharfs, storage facilities and repair shops at all ports on the Volga and Caspian Sea. In 1905, the Company purchased an oil field in Bibi-Eybat Bay. In 1869-1870, the company purchased an American-type motor vessel (in Belgium) and named it “The Emperor Alexander II”. In 1876, the company introduced a regular 8-day connection between Nizhny Novgorod and Baku and in 1880, the Company began building its own steamships. In 1901, the K&M opened agencies in Tehran and other Persian cities. Expansion through several acquisitions of other Russian shipping companies followed and by 1916, the company had a fleet of more than 900 steamships and 350 diesel locomotives. The company was nationalised in 1918.