Yang Fan touched his nose a little depressed. The little girl was jealous. It seemed that it was okay not to flirt with her all the time. It would not end well for a girl in this era if she got angry.
This was the first time that Yang Fan came into contact with Japanese women. They were as cute as cats and as gentle as water, which fascinated him.
The sea breeze was already a little cold, blowing the little girl's ponytail.
"Ah no!" Xiao Niangpi sneezed.
"Let's go, let's go back. The sea wind here is strong, so be careful of getting cold," Yang Fan said to Xiao Niangpi.
The young lady gave Yang Fan a white look.
"You stay at the inn tonight first. I'm going to the hidden pile at Beitangkou. There may be flying pigeons delivering messages tomorrow morning. You wait for my news." After Tu Shanyue finished speaking, he rode away.
Yang Fan saw that it was still early, it looked like it was not even three o'clock in the afternoon.
He turned around and said to Zhang Naida: "Let the brothers go back to the big car shop to rest. We have just paid out the wages. Brothers can go out and have fun, but gambling is strictly prohibited. Anyone who dares to enter the casino will be caught by the military police team and beaten with a military stick.
Regardless of rank.”
"Here" Zhang Gada stood at attention and replied.
Master, I don’t know what’s going on. The brothers went to the trap to ignore it, but they especially hate gambling. In this era, there are no soldiers who don’t gamble. If they are caught, they will be beaten severely. They will not tolerate it. If they do it again, they will deduct money. If they do it again, they will be expelled.
Then he said to Mingyan: "Go and see if there are any shipyards around here that are for sale. In addition, there are shipwrights around who are willing to come over. Hire as many as they can. There are craftsmen in the craftsmen's camp of the guard station who are willing to do so."
You can release as much as you want, and the price can be easily negotiated. Buy more of the sun-dried wood used in shipbuilding."
Mingyan was very quick and went directly to the local dental shop. These people were well-informed and quickly found a shipyard for sale.
It is located five miles north of Beitangkou. It is owned by a boss from Fujian. It mainly builds some fishing boats. It is not very big, but there are hundreds of acres of land along the coast. The place is quite spacious, and there is room for expansion in the future.
The boss had made some money over the years and wanted to return to his hometown for retirement. Several of his sons were taking the imperial examinations, but no one was willing to take over, so he simply sold it.
Yang Fan went to take a look and found that the facilities were very shabby. There were more than seventy people, twenty of them were old shipwrights, more than thirty apprentices, and some doing odd jobs.
There was nothing else, except that there was a dry dock that aroused Yang Fan's interest. This small shipyard actually had such a large dock, which surprised Yang Fan.
After inquiring, I found out that this place was originally a ship repair yard of the Navy. It was later abandoned. The boss cleared the relationship and spent money to buy it. This Navy shipyard was left over from the original shipyard and had not been used for at least a hundred years.
Ship building.
He only builds small fishing boats here. He usually scrapes the bottoms of small fishing boats, and there is almost no chance of using a dry dock. The shipbuilding market has not been good in the past two years, and he cannot build three or five fishing boats a year. Last time
It was three years ago that I received the order for the welfare ship.
This old dock has a lot of silt and is overgrown with weeds. It will take a lot of labor to clean it out.
Yang Fan looked around and asked someone to measure it with a tape measure. The internal length of the dock was about 83 meters and the width was nearly 45 meters.
It's really not that small.
The British first-class battleship, HMS Victory, has a total length of 70 meters and a total width of only 16 meters. This shipyard is building two at the same time, which is enough.
"This was built during the reign of Emperor Chengzu. When the Sanbao eunuchs went to the Western Ocean, the main ships were built in Nanjing. At that time, some ministers proposed that the northern sea area was close to important places in the capital and should also have the ability to build large ships, so this dock was built. Although
It's two hundred years old, but it was built with Sanhe soil and bluestone, and it's still very strong today. Even though it's heavily silted and covered with weeds, the seams inside the stones fit tightly together, and even now you can't insert a sharp knife into the gaps."
The old factory owner patted the inner wall of the dock with some emotion. The Ming Dynasty had been in a state of decline over the past few years. It was getting worse year by year, and business was becoming more and more difficult to do.
The sea ban lasted for a long time, and there were no big orders. The old masters who had built large ships gradually withered and died, and the level of shipbuilding gradually declined seriously.
"Do you still have the ability to make fortune ships now?" Yang Fan asked.
"You can still build something with less than 1,000 materials, but you can't build anything larger than that."
In ancient times, the tonnage of shipbuilding was represented by "material". When converted into tons, 1 material = 0.325 tons. A thousand materials means more than 300 tons. It can be considered a middle-to-lower fortune ship.
"How much wood is dried in the shade?" Yang Fan asked.
Shipbuilding requires wood that has been shade-dried for many years. Newly felled trees cannot be used. Preparing materials is the most time-consuming. This is why Yang Fan wants to buy a ready-made shipyard. Just preparing the wood for a new shipyard will take several years.
"Business has not been very good in the past few years, but we have accumulated more than 13,000 pieces of wood. They are all in the wood storage yard. You can go and take a look. They are all high-quality wood that is more than ten years old."
Yang Fan looked around and was very satisfied. Now that the shipbuilding industry is in a slump, it would be difficult for him to make money if he took over, but his purpose is not to make money by building ships.
Yang Fan mainly wants to study high-speed ships so that he can develop overseas trade in the future.
With the current climate in the Ming Dynasty, he cannot expect the land to produce enough, but there is no shortage of food in the whole of East Asia. There is as much as you want in the Mekong River Delta, the Red River Delta, and Siam. As long as there is an order, they will
We will open up wasteland for you to plant. There will be two or even three crops a year. The food there is not valuable.
Transportation is the biggest shortcoming. Generally speaking, sea freight is the cheapest, and train freight is more than five times that of sea freight. However, current ship technology is too backward and relies too much on monsoons. It takes about half a year to travel between Siam and Tianjin. It makes Yang Fan feel
Intolerable.
The reasons for this include the backwardness of navigation technology and the backwardness of the ships themselves.
In this era, most ships only dared to sail along the coastline, using needle maps to mark the topography and landforms along the way, such as the islands, mountains, cities, river estuaries, etc. they relied on to navigate. This must have gone too far.
The wrongful path.
To cross the ocean directly and in a straight line requires navigation equipment such as a sextant, as well as well-trained professional sailors.
On the ship itself, the line shape of the hull, the amount of resistance, the efficiency of the sails, the anti-sinkability of the watertight compartments, the efficiency of the steering gear, etc. are all factors that restrict ocean navigation.
But Yang Fan can find almost all the information on the development of sailing ships, and there is no problem in buying a shipyard and developing advanced ships.
"How much do you charge for this shipyard?" Yang Fan asked.
"Seven thousand eight hundred taels," said the factory owner.
"With this small amount of people, we can't build a big ship. The price is a bit high. If it's only five thousand taels, I'd be willing to buy it."
"The price is definitely not expensive. The Chengzu Dynasty spent fifty thousand taels of silver to build this dock alone. Although it has not been used for more than two hundred years, it can still be used after it is dug out."
"Six thousand taels, I don't want any more. After all, I have to make money when buying it. Now it only costs two to three hundred taels to build a fishing boat. The investment is too high and the cost cannot be recovered."
"Okay, just six thousand taels, let's go to the Yamen to transfer the ownership tomorrow."
This chapter has been completed!