On June 10, the 46th year of Xuanping Dynasty, five days before the Suez Canal Company of the Tang Dynasty was scheduled to be fully opened to navigation, a 100-ton cargo ship flying the flag of the Pacific Shipping Company was slowly leaving the Port of Suez. However, the ship was not the same as the Suez Canal Company.
Like many ships, it sailed towards the Red Sea and then all the way south into the Indian Ocean.
Instead, it went all the way north and entered the northernmost waters of the narrow Red Sea.
At the northernmost point of the Red Sea is the recently completed Suez Canal.
This 10,000-ton cargo ship is the Dawan, which belongs to the Pacific Ocean Shipping Company. It is a relatively new cargo ship with only three years of age. The Dawan is also one of the many ocean-going ships of the Pacific Ocean Shipping Company and is in active service.
Later, like many other freighters, it traveled around the world.
Although it has only been three years, it has actually traveled all over the world.
This time, the ship departed from the mainland and transported a large amount of export materials, including cloth and other light industrial products, a large amount of weapons and ammunition, etc. These materials were transported to Europe.
Under normal circumstances, the ship will bypass South Africa and follow the African route to the European port of Ceuta.
But this time it was just in time for the opening of the Suez Canal.
Datang Suez Canal Company began to contact major shipping companies a few days ago, saying that it was preparing to conduct a trial voyage of a 10,000-ton sea-going ship to actually verify the navigation and dispatching capabilities of the Suez Canal.
Well, what is being verified is the actual navigation dispatching capability, not the canal's navigation capability.
Now that the canal has been opened, it actually has navigation capabilities. Before the Grand Bay, there were actually many ships going to and from the Suez Canal for trial navigation.
From small boats of a few hundred tons at the beginning, to ships of several thousand tons, and finally to ships of 10,000 tons, three days ago, even a navy cruiser entered the Mediterranean Sea through the Suez Canal.
Before the Grand Bay, there were actually more than twenty ships of different types passing through the Suez Canal.
However, it is not enough to be able to navigate. The Datang Suez Canal Company estimates that after the official navigation, the number of navigation ships will be larger, so it is necessary to formulate relevant dispatching and navigation plans in advance.
The current trial voyage of the Dawan is actually used to simulate the dispatch situation when the route is busy.
Therefore, it seems that there is only one Dawan. It is obviously in an empty canal, but it still stops or sails many times in several wide rivers or special channels in the canal, and sails according to the dispatching instructions.
Because at this time the canal company was simulating an extremely busy navigation situation.
Before entering the canal, the Dawan sailed according to the dispatcher's instructions, heading north, and finally slowly passed the entire canal, and finally successfully sailed out of the canal and entered the Mediterranean Sea.
When the Dawan entered the Mediterranean Sea, applause erupted in the control room of the Dawan. Not only the captain of the Dawan, but also representatives of the Pacific Shipping Company, representatives of the canal company, even representatives of the navy and representatives of the Red Sea Affairs Office.
The successful navigation of the Dawan not only means that 10,000-ton sea-going ships can be navigated, but also means that the canal company's many detailed plans in dispatching have been perfected, and the canal can be officially opened to navigation in the future, providing services for ships traveling between East Asia and Europe.
More convenient navigation conditions.
After the Dawan entered the Mediterranean, a group of representatives left in a transport boat, and the Dawan continued its journey. According to the scheduled plan, the Dawan will first go to Alex Port, unload some of the cargo, and then continue its journey to Athens.
, Black Sea Strait and other ports, and finally headed to Ceuta to unload the last cargo.
During this process, some cargo will also be loaded.
The tens of thousands of tons of goods transported from the mainland will eventually be unloaded from these relatively large Datang naval base ports with modern facilities, and finally distributed, loaded onto small and medium-sized ships, and distributed to various indigenous ports.
Eventually these goods will enter the entire European region.
But what happened next has nothing to do with the Dawan.
After unloading the cargo in Ceuta, the Grand Bay underwent simple maintenance at the local naval base repair shop, then reloaded with coal and fresh water, and again loaded approximately 3,000 tons of cargo at the Port of Ceuta.
Including the cargo previously loaded from the Port of Alexandria, the Port of Athens, and the Black Sea Port, the cargo left the Port of Ceuta with about 9,000 tons of cargo, passed through the Strait of Gibraltar, and entered the Atlantic Ocean.
The ship will continue to sail all the way west, and will arrive at the Port of Heroes, which has been fully controlled by Datang and has immigrated, and a military base has been built on it. After replenishing coal and fresh water, it will continue to the north.
New Jiangnan Port on the east coast of America.
The voyage of the Dawan will last a long time. After arriving in North America, it will go to Brazil and Argentina in South America, then go around the southernmost tip of South America, and finally go north to Xinjin Mountain and other areas before crossing
The Pacific, via Pearl Harbor, and finally back to the Empire's East Asian homeland.
Of course, many large-tonnage freighters in the empire will run such global routes, but in fact only a few will do so.
Most of the large-tonnage cargo ships actually run on the empire's domestic routes. The coastal provinces of the empire's East Asia, including Beihai Province and Nanyang Province, and the routes surrounding the ports in these places are currently the most important and important ones in the empire.
The busiest routes.
As for overseas routes, although they are getting busier day by day, they are still not comparable to domestic coastal routes.
Moreover, these overseas routes are actually concentrated on routes from the mainland to the Americas. As for the 10,000-ton cargo ships that go to Europe, there are actually very few.
After all, Europe, and even the Red Sea region, are not the main areas for overseas immigrants in the empire at present.
There are not many overseas immigrants, so the freight volume is naturally small.
As for the indigenous market, there is only a small amount in total, and it is impossible to support too much of the imperial ocean shipping market.
The core business of the three major shipping companies in the empire actually revolves around domestic coastal routes, and at most one American route.
As for the Indian Ocean routes and European routes, they are relatively remote routes.
However, with the opening of the Suez Canal and the full launch of the empire's European strategy, the proportion of European routes will inevitably increase in the future, but that will be a thing of the future.
As for now, the imperial shipping company is actually paying more attention to the American routes and the construction of the Panama Canal.
The construction of the Panama Canal started earlier than that of the Suez Canal, but the natural environment there is harsher and the construction difficulty is much higher, so the opening time is much later.