Karelin, V. Russian business interests on Spitsbergen in the early twentieth century: Pavel Weymarn and Russian Spitsbergen Company // Norway and Russia in the Arctic : conference proceeding from international conference «Norway and Russia in the Arctic», Longyearbyen, 25-28 August 2009 / S. Bones, P. Mankova. – Tromso, 2010. – S. 19-27. – (Speculum boreale. The Publication Series of the Department of History and Religious Studies University of Tromso ; № 12).

Weymam later insisted that after the war broke out, the company ceased all contact with Piehl & Fehling. With the outbreak of war in August 1914, von Weymam was called up for naval service. His first appointment was as a navigator on the battleship Poltava in the Baltic Fleet. Later, in September, he was transferred to the position of Flag Officer Adjutant in a squadron of the Baltic Fleet. 22 This meant he had the chance to retain close contact with Baltic Fleet staff officers such as A. V. Kolchak and the Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet, Admiral Nikolay von Essen. In parallel with his war duties, von Weymam continued to pursue his entrepreneurial activities. In his reports to Navy General Staff, von Weymam describes in March 1917 how the war had influenced his company’s activities negatively on the one hand, but on the other hand it had also opened up new prospects for his business. Since the war had started, the strategic significance of Spitsbergen to Russia had become quite evident. In 1916, in order to defend communications with the Entente through the Arctic seas, the Navy had established a new naval base on the Murman coast. The year before - early in 1915 - the Imperial Government had made a decision to begin the construction of a railway from Petrograd to the Kola Bay on the Murman shore. Both needed independent and reliable sources of fuel supply. Admiral von Essen took all these facts into consideration. According to von Weymam, he sympathized with the establishment of the Russian Spitsbergen Company and its activities on the archipelago. The Admiral Commander-in-Chief therefore approved von Weymam’s visit to Norway in February 1915 to resolve urgent business problems. During this visit, on 26 February 1915, von Weymam signed a new contract with his Norwegian counterparts. According to this contract, the Russian Spitsbergen Company undertook an obligation to make the next payment of 116,000 Norwegian crowns in 1916, the following year.23 The payment was made by “our group from Petrograd”. The first tranche was mediated through the Russian Bank for Trade and Industry. The subsequent tranches were made by putting von Weymam’s company securities on deposit to the Azovsko-Donskoy Bank. The latter, for its part, stepped forth as a guarantor of all subsequent payments in favour of all the Norwegian owners for the Norwegian Central Bank.24 22 Vladimir Konstantinovich Pilkin and N. Rutych, V Beloy borbe na Severo-Zapade: dnevnik 1918-1920, Moskva, 2005, pp. 509-510 23 Russian Navy Archive in Saint-Petersburg. Fond 418. Opis 2. File № 70, pp. 31- 33 24Russian Navy Archive in Saint-Petersburg. Fond 418. Opis 2. File № 70, p. 33 24