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15th October 1901
Mrs Paul Boeckel & Co
Saint Petersburg

Dears Sirs,
We beg to acknoledge receipt of your favour of the 28 September /11th inst.
We had been led to believe at the end of the last year that your government would prepared to consider offers of coaling contracts which they had never done in the past, and we accordingly submitted an offer for their requirements at Port Said or Suez, but we were afterwards officially informed that we had been under a misapprehension, and that the "commanders of Russians ships abroad should continue to be free to apply to whenever they chose for their coal requirements". Since then, we have obtained locally the orders for the requirements of some of the Russian men of war in the Suez Canal in the same manner as has been the case for year past.
If it be that your Ministry of Marine are now prepared to make a change in the arrangement and to adopt the plan of contracting at each part for all their requirements for the year we shall be much pleased to avail ourselves of your kind offer to submit offers and negotiate the business on our behalf, but we are not yet in a position to name prices... the possibility is that our quotations will not be issued until some time next month. Meanwhile you would doubtless be able to obtain the confirmation of your Minister's intentions, and as soon as we are prepared with final quotations we should post them to you.