Chapter 1515 The Datang Patent Office has a long way to go
As an ordinary clerk in Shanghai, he can only earn three or four yuan a month at most, but as long as he goes overseas, his income can increase tenfold immediately.
The trading company that Lu Zhenjiang applied for was Weilan Trading Company. Among the more than 100 overseas trading companies in the Tang Empire, this company was not very special, and its strength was only average.
The company has a total of four merchant ships. In the past, it mainly ran the South Sea route. However, since the empire reformed the Tang Western Trading Company and opened up its Western trading rights, Weilan Trading Company, like other trading companies, quickly spent huge sums of money.
I applied for a Western Trade License, then began to prepare the goods and recruit crew members to prepare for overseas travel.
Lu Zhenjiang happened to catch up with them when they were preparing goods and crews and preparing to participate in the first Western trade.
Lu Zhenjiang's application went smoothly. This was not because Lu Zhenjiang was so awesome, but because he had few competitors.
It is very dangerous to go to sea these days, and most people are afraid of it, especially some scholars. They stay well in China and there is no need to risk their lives for money.
Therefore, all kinds of sailors who go to sea these days are actually ordinary people from the lower class of the empire. Of course, high-level employees such as captains are not included in this group.
Lu Zhenjiang's job is to be a ship's clerk. In fact, to put it bluntly, he is to assist the company manager who leads the team in handling some paperwork. His daily work can be said to be very easy.
However, such a job, no matter how easy it is, must be done by scholars, and ordinary scholars will not do it.
After Lu Zhenjiang signed the employment contract, before leaving Shanghai, he sent most of his salary back home and sent a letter back to his family saying that he had found a better job in Shanghai.
, my income has increased significantly, but I need to travel frequently. If I need to send a letter to my family in the future, I can send it directly to the company.
He did not explicitly say that he went to sea or overseas!
That will only make your family worry!
After leaving Shanghai, the two merchant ships of Azure Trading Company first arrived in Guangzhou, and then in Malacca. Finally, in Malacca, they joined many other ships heading to India or South Africa for trade and set sail into the Indian Ocean.
Then they arrived in Gohe State, Colombo, and finally all the way to Mada City.
So, in fact, half a year has passed since they set off from Shanghai!
In the past six months, Lu Zhenjiang has also become accustomed to life at sea, which is monotonous and boring. When he cannot see the land for a long time, he will also have a desperate mentality.
However, there were no dangers along the way. Lu Zhenjiang was lucky. In addition, he was riding the new ship "Shuilan" newly ordered by Weilan Trading Company and it was the first time it carried out an ocean mission.
The Shuilan merchant ship is a typical Tang Dynasty ship produced by Hong Kong Ding Shing Shipyard. Most of the civilian merchant ships manufactured by Hong Kong Ding Shing Shipyard are large-tonnage ships.
The merchant ship Shuilan is no exception. The standard displacement can reach more than 900 tons, and in extreme cases, the full load can even exceed 1,000 tons.
However, this huge ship, the Aqua Blue, is not the largest ship in the fleet heading to South Africa.
Not to mention warships, the battleships in the navy are big ones.
If we only discuss civilian merchant ships, there is also a behemoth from the Tang Dynasty Western Trading Company!
The East Africa is one of the more than twenty thousand-ton merchant ships ordered by Datang Western Trading Company in recent years. Its standard displacement is more than 1,500 tons!
The ship type of the East Africa comes from the new generation steam merchant ship series proposed by Hong Kong Ding Shing Shipyard three years ago, and is the product of subsequent improvements and designs.
Since its establishment, Hong Kong Ding Shing Shipyard has been committed to developing and building merchant ships with larger tonnage, better navigation performance, and lower unit shipping costs. Its main business is the construction of warships, and its other major business is the construction of large-tonnage ships.
Merchant ship.
The Type 68 merchant ship launched in the early years became the representative of Tang Dynasty ships. Basically, the ships later designed and built by major shipyards in the Tang Dynasty were inseparable from the influence of the Type 68 ship.
Its characteristic is to pay more attention to navigation performance, ensure the safety of ocean navigation, and under this premise, load as much cargo as possible and increase the speed.
This also leads to the fact that the cargo capacity of contemporary Tang ships is not as good as that of Galen ships under the same tonnage, but their seaworthiness and speed are higher than that of Galen ships.
Based on the success of the 68-type ship, Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard launched an expanded and improved version of the 800-ton merchant ship, and then launched a thousand-ton merchant ship plan.
And it has always firmly occupied the position of the leading shipyard for large-tonnage merchant ships.
Three years ago, as steam engine technology matured, steel was gradually used in the field of shipbuilding. At that time, Hong Kong Ding Sheng Shipyard, while undertaking the navy's new generation of steam steel ships, also launched a new generation of steam merchant ship development plan.
The core design of the new generation steam merchant ship plan is still to load more cargo while maintaining a certain speed while maintaining navigation performance to ensure overall transportation costs.
The design prototype has a standard displacement of 1,500 tons, and according to the customer's needs, the most advanced three-cylinder high-horsepower steam engine or the mature, stable, relatively low-priced two-cylinder steam engine can be selected.
The design of the hull took into account the loading of steam engines from the beginning, so the overall layout was more reasonable, and a large amount of steel was used instead of wood for shipbuilding.
At the same time, in order to reduce the cost of sailing, a large-area sail system is also indispensable. At the same time, in order to reduce labor costs and reduce the number of sailors, the sail system uses a certain amount of mechanical equipment to allow fewer sailors to control the sail.
Of course, every customer's specific needs for ships are different. Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard only provides a prototype solution with numerous optional solutions. Customers can choose different components and even their displacement according to their actual conditions.
It can also be enlarged or reduced appropriately.
As long as the customer gives money, they have a design plan for 2,000 tons.
As the largest ocean-going trading company in China, Datang Western Trading Company is rich and powerful, and because it runs Indian Ocean routes, the demand for large-tonnage ships is endless. It has always been a loyal user of Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard.
After the launch of this new generation of steam engine merchant ships, Datang Western Trading Company quickly placed an order for five ships at once.
Among the many overseas trading companies or shipping companies in China, there is no one with such skill.
The Northeast was one of the first batch of five steam merchant ship orders. Because it was the first batch, there were not many changes. Just because the Indian Ocean route was more dangerous, and considering the need to enter the Indian Ocean in the future, Datang's Western Trade
The safety performance of ships is more proactive.
Therefore, the most advanced three-cylinder steam engine was selected, which is very powerful. Even if it does not rely on sails, it can still rely on the steam engine to maintain a speed of ten knots and continue sailing.
Of course, the coal capacity of merchant ships these days is not very good. If they purely use steam engines, their endurance is not very good.
Because the tonnage is limited, if you load too much coal, there will be no room to load cargo, which is unacceptable for merchant ships. However, the warships of the Navy do not need to load cargo, so they generally carry more coal.
At the same time, the Navy also has special coal supply ships that can provide coal supplies to warships at any time.
But naval battleships are born for war. Everything is done from a combat perspective, but merchant ships are different.
Therefore, even in the field of civilian ships, the East Africa is already the most advanced steam ship, but its endurance, defense, anti-sinkability, and maneuverability are still far inferior to those of the steam warships of the same era.
This is also an inevitable influence brought about by the development of the times.
The boundaries between merchant ships and warships are constantly widening.
In the age of sails, the difference between merchant ships and warships was actually not that big. Some large-tonnage, well-designed armed merchant ships also had quite excellent combat capabilities.
Therefore, it is very normal for warships and a large number of armed merchant ships to participate in decisive battles at sea.
But now, to be precise, after the emergence of steam steel battleships, the gap between merchant ships and battleships is getting wider and wider, because the performance requirements of the two are completely different.
The first consideration for merchant ships is cost, while the first consideration for battleships is combat effectiveness.
If you ask those trading companies to purchase a merchant ship with great combat power but unable to carry several tons of cargo, this company will go bankrupt in minutes!
In fact, even if they are not in the Tang Navy, even in Spain, Portugal and even England, they have begun to build more and more professional warships. Even if their professional warships are still sailing and wooden warships, their combat effectiveness is far superior to those of armed merchant ships.
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This is the general trend of naval development in the contemporary world, whether it is in the Tang Dynasty, which is more technologically advanced and can already build steam steel ships, or in European countries, which are still technologically stagnant.
It is worth emphasizing that the professional warships started to be built by contemporary European countries are basically all Tang ship types, not the traditional Krat ships or Galen ships.
There is no way. The Tang Ship was originally developed by a group of people from the Royal Institute of Technology specifically for naval battleships. It was only later changed to a merchant ship. It was born specifically for naval battles.
The hull design of the contemporary Tang Dynasty ship type has basically reached the maturity stage of sailing wooden warships. The navies of various European countries are not stupid, and people can tell the quality at a glance.
So first the Portuguese, then the Spanish, and then England and other countries began to build Tang Dynasty warships in a swarm.
Not only the battleships, but also the merchant ships of the Tang Dynasty were directly imitated.
This made the Patent Office under the Ministry of Commerce of the Tang Dynasty quite dissatisfied. It believed that these natives had no patent awareness at all and unscrupulously infringed on the patents of Datang enterprises.
That year, they also filed a lawsuit against the Portuguese shipyard in Malacca. After winning the lawsuit, the Guangzhou Prefectural Court specifically imposed a sky-high fine on the Portuguese shipyard in Malacca!
What a pity!
If we want to protect the patents of Datang individuals and companies on a global scale, we still have a long way to go!