institution

Volunteer Fleet

the Volunteer Fleet

also: Добровольный флот, Dobrovolny Flot

A Russian merchant-marine steamship company, founded 1878 by public subscription, that operated the long sea route between Odessa and the Far East (including Sakhalin) via the Suez Canal; run partly on naval lines with military-style discipline, it is the return route Chekhov's Tomsk acquaintances warn him off as tediously regimented, though he ultimately does sail home on one of its ships later in 1890.

Reading notes

To V. O. Kononovich, 5 January 1891. Moscow. §2 Dobrovolets
"Добровольцем" is the instrumental case of \emph{Doborovolets} ("Volunteer"), the generic name Chekhov uses here for a ship of the Volunteer Fleet -- the merchant-marine line running the Odessa-to-Far-East sea route -- not a proper vessel name; the corpus renders it as "the Dobrovolets" to preserve the telegram's own shorthand rather than supplying an unattested ship name. It is the same institution Chekhov later petitions directly, in February 1891, to carry the textbooks from Odessa to Sakhalin free of charge, and whose Committee confirms that free carriage shortly after.
To V. O. Kononovich, 19 February 1891. Moscow. §115 Комитет Добровольного флота
Chekhov applies directly to the Volunteer Fleet's own governing committee (institution:volunteer-fleet) -- the same merchant-marine line that carried him home from Sakhalin in 1890 and that he had told Kononovich, back in January's telegram, would carry the books out in April -- to request free carriage for this shipment specifically, since it exceeds his original textbook mandate.
To V. O. Kononovich, 27 February 1891. Moscow. §5 The Volunteer Fleet committee
The merchant-marine line that had carried Chekhov home from Sakhalin in 1890 (see institution:volunteer-fleet); its confirmation of free carriage removes the last practical obstacle to the school-library shipment Chekhov had been organizing since his return, reported piecemeal across and.