At present, the various economic activities of the Tang Empire are still conducted within the Datang Empire, and the number of foreign trade exchanges is actually very small.
Therefore, the absolute market of major shipping companies is the internal shipping market of the empire.
What was the share of shipping within the empire?
It is large enough to maintain the empire's merchant ship tonnage of 13 million tons, and continues to drive the empire's shipbuilding industry to build new ships with a huge new merchant ship tonnage of more than 800,000 tons every year.
Therefore, it is impossible for major shipping companies to abandon the West Pacific route and allocate ships to some African route.
And another point is that the shipping industry is related to the people's livelihood of the empire, and major shipping companies also need to assume social responsibilities. If you transfer a large number of ships to Africa, what will you do if you let the people of the empire travel?
If the people of the empire find out that your shipping company has canceled a certain domestic route in order to make money from the indigenous people, they will probably be scolded to death.
Forget it if the public complains, I'm afraid the shipping department will come to your door in minutes to persuade you to consider the overall situation!
If you still don’t listen, the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises may be thinking about adjusting the management of the shipping company!
Well, many giants in shipping companies are controlled by the Ministry of State-owned Enterprises, such as Yangtze River Shipping Company and Pacific Shipping Company.
Feng Shipping Company is a purely private enterprise, but people also have to estimate the social impact.
So major shipping companies, faced with the sudden outbreak of African route business, are also very entangled and ignore it?
Definitely not. That would be a huge immigration business of tens of millions or even twenty or thirty million, and it would also come with a huge freight business. Although it is nothing compared to the huge passenger transport business within the empire, it is still money after all.
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As a commercial company, a shipping company cannot struggle with money!
The management of major shipping companies all took similar measures at this time!
The first is to fully mobilize a group of ships that have been serving overseas, especially non-standard ships that have previously been engaged in the indigenous transportation market, and earn more money by making more round trips.
Secondly, some of the ships that are ready to be retired in the domestic market, or have been retired, are put back into use after simple transformation and put into the operation of African routes.
This batch of ships is mainly from the 1920s, that is, in the first ten years after the emergence of steam ships, major shipping companies chased each other and concentrated on building a large number of early steam transport ships.
Because the technology of these ships was not mature when they were built, coupled with the high-intensity use in the later period, shipping companies generally choose to directly scrap them after their service life, and then sell them to ship-breaking yards for scrap metal.
However, due to aging and other factors, these old ships cannot meet the empire's passenger transport quality standards without spending a lot of money to upgrade and modify them, and cannot pass the review to obtain operating licenses. However, the cost of upgrades and modifications is huge, so the shipping company might as well just order new ones.
Where's the boat?
And if it is put into service on overseas routes such as Europe and Africa, it can bypass the supervision of the damn Ministry of Transportation.
If they only transport indigenous and indigenous goods, these ships do not need a passenger operation license, or even a freight operation license!
As for the condition of the ships being too bad, what should I do if they sink? This is not the case. These ships have many faults, inadequate safety facilities, substandard comfort, etc. If they need to be upgraded, modified and maintained, it will be expensive and not cost-effective.
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It doesn’t mean that the hull is about to fall apart!
The major shipping companies are not stupid, and they will not really put out ships that can sink at any time. If they sink, they will not even be able to buy scrap iron. Scrap iron is very valuable these days.
Besides, if it sinks, Datang's crew will also be in trouble. If a group of crew members die, it will greatly affect the company's reputation, and the insurance company will probably find them trouble by then. If the price rises next year
If the crew insurance premiums are paid, major shipping companies will suffer losses.
After repeated consideration, major shipping companies retired some old ships from some domestic routes and then carried out emergency simple modifications.
In order to accommodate more passengers, an ordinary passenger ship running the local coastal route can only carry 500 people at full load. However, if it is used to transport indigenous people, only 500 people will be transported and the shipping company will suffer losses.
The indigenous people don't have much money, so the ticket price they can afford is very low. With such a low ticket price, you will lose money if you don't take thousands of people with you at one time. You can make a profit by bringing 1,500 people with you. If you take 2,000 people with you, you will lose money.
Only talented people can earn more.
Therefore, before embarking on the route from Europe, West Asia to Africa, it is necessary to carry out simple modifications and discard all unnecessary things in order to have more space to accommodate more people, and at the same time discard any non-essential cost services, such as providing cabin services.
Crew, there is no need to provide any service at all.
At most, it is to maintain some necessary cabin management, and it cannot use Datang employees with relatively high wages, but temporary resident employees.
In this regard, Pacific Shipping Company, the most experienced company, prepared eight decommissioned ships for professional modifications in one go, and even prepared for subsequent dismantling during the modification process.
Well, anyway, if this ship runs the route from Europe to Africa for a few more years, it will probably not be able to run at all. It will also be sold for scrap metal and dismantled by then. It is convenient to make preparations in advance now.
It is a follow-up matter to refit decommissioned ships from the mainland and go there. Now, European countries and indigenous countries such as West Asia and India have set off a climax of colonization in Africa.
The above countries are still colonial, but the six Ottoman kingdoms have already begun large-scale migration. Each kingdom in the six kingdoms hired ships from the Tang Shipping Company to transport immigrants for them.
Every day, many people board Tang Dynasty ships from various ports and then head to Africa!
This allowed several major shipping companies in the Tang Empire, especially those operating routes in Europe, West Asia, and Africa, to gain a surge in business volume.
In addition to deploying more than ten ships to specifically handle the migration business of the six Oscar countries, the European branch of Pacific Shipping Company has also deployed several other ships to launch the latest scheduled flights from various parts of Europe to African ports, specifically for immigrants from all over Europe.
Provide transportation services.
Even so, Pacific Shipping Company is deeply aware of the lack of transportation capacity. After all, it seems that there are many ships, but in fact, the ships operated by the European branch are small-tonnage ships, even though these ships are specialized in non-standard transportation business, carrying
The passenger volume is much larger than standard transportation.
But facing the huge shipping demand, it is still not enough!
Pacific Shipping Company is like this, and so are most of the European branches of other shipping companies. Now they are all trying their best to increase their shipping capacity.