The Penghu Islands is an island with no fresh water, no rivers, only some small lakes with accumulated water. Because it happens to be in the "Pacific water vapor shadow area" of Taiwan, the Penghu Islands has become a rare and drier area on the southeast coast, and it is strong in wind.
The characteristics of Tai Island are that it is rainy in the eastern coastal areas and the northern coastal areas, while the rainfall in the western coastal areas is smaller. For example, the Budai Salt Field on the southwest coast of Tai Island is a famous Pacific water vapor shadow area. It has good sunny weather and is very suitable for salt drying.
Speaking of which, the Penghu Islands, which are also part of the Pacific water vapor shadow area of ​​Taiwan, are also suitable for salt drying. However, Marin does not intend to promote it.
Because if you really want to dry salt here, it would be a disaster if you learn it by the Portuguese. The vast coast of North Africa is more suitable for drying salt. If the Portuguese do salt drying on the coasts of North Africa and West Africa, Marin's salt-making business will be immediately washed away. Therefore, he would rather have good skills than use it than insist on boiling salt. After all, the cost of boiling salt with coal is much lower than that of boiling salt with firewood, which can form a cost advantage.
But because there are no rivers, the Panhu Islands lack a Danshui River port. In this way, warships that dock in Penghu Water Village for a long time are easily eroded by shipworms... So, how did the Ming Navy solve this problem?
"If you use iron wood to build the bottom of the ship, the shipworm will not be able to gnaw it!" explained a shipbuilder at Longjiang Treasure Shipyard.
"What?" Marin was stunned. He didn't expect that the Ming Dynasty people solved the problem of shipworms so simple and crude. Tielwood was hard wood that even shipworms could not chew. However, it seemed a bit extravagant to build the bottom of the ship...
Marin didn't know that although there were not many ironwoods in this era, they were not small. Because of the excellent characteristics of ironwood, they were cut down in large quantities to build ships, build furniture, and even build city gates. Therefore, ironwood was also consumed in large quantities. In later generations, because of the consumption of too much, ironwood had been listed as a national second-class protected plant by the state.
But in this era, ironwood was not scarce. In the Ming Dynasty, there were warships made of ironwood, with a cost of 400 materials, which was only 700 taels of silver, including the costs of craftsmen and other costs. Zheng He's treasure ships voyage to the West were so large that each ship cost about 2,000 taels of silver.
According to the shipbuilder of the Longjiang Treasure Shipyard rewarded by the Ming court, building a large ship such as Malin's 500-ton warship is only 3,000 taels of ironwood. If it is only 3,000 taels of ironwood on the bottom and side, the cost is only about 2,000 taels of ironwood on the bottom and side...
"Damn--" Marin couldn't help but swear.
You should know that when his 500-ton warship is used, the cost of a ship is as high as tens of thousands of gold coins per ship. A gold coin is calculated based on 1 to 12 gold and silver coins, and it is worth 1.14 taels of silver. In other words, the cost of the Marin warship is as high as more than 11,400 taels.
Even if you use cheap American wood to build a ship in the future, it will only cost half the cost. After all, European shipbuilders have really high salaries... With the prices of paint and dry oil, you can't save it...
But if you build a ship in the Ming Dynasty, you will use iron wood all the costs, and the cost will be much lower than in Europe. Of course, the premise is that you have to use a shipbuilder with low wages in the Ming Dynasty...
According to the current salary, the annual salary of shipbuilders in the Ming Dynasty is only a few taels of silver, and the annual salary of top shipbuilders is no more than 10 taels. The Beihai country's shipbuilders, even apprentice shipbuilders, have a daily salary of 3 Finney, with an annual salary of 21.7 taels. The annual salary of experienced shipbuilders can be equivalent to more than 40 taels... Just the salary alone, the difference is several times...
Therefore, Malin instantly decided to set up a shipyard on the Ming Dynasty to directly import boards from the Ming Dynasty to build ships, which could be as low as possible.
However, according to the craftsmen of Longjiang Bao Shipyard, the Ming Dynasty's shipbuilding was built in sections and was built in steps according to watertight compartments. This is not a problem. The problem is that most shipbuilding wood in the Ming Dynasty was cut, and there were few logs that could be used as keels. Even if there were, it was just logged and not yet divided. However, the keels of sea ships would have to wait for a year or two... Therefore, Marin's idea of ​​using European shipbuilding technology to explode ships on the Ming Dynasty was temporarily unsuccessful, and it would not be feasible after at least two years. Moreover, we must now book enough keels...
Marin was also deeply helpless about this. He had thought about transporting keels from America, but the keels were dozens of meters long and were not suitable for ocean shipping at all. Therefore, the shipyard on Taiwan could only wait for the keel materials on the Ming Dynasty to be air-dried enough.
But no matter what, it is very necessary to use ironwood as the side guard. The side of the ironwood is hard to penetrate the ordinary iron ball shells. If you wrap it with ironwood, it is really invincible...
However, it is said that the number of shipbuilders provided to him by the Ming Dynasty this time seemed to be a bit large. Therefore, Marin did not intend to leave all these craftsmen here to build ships. After all, they still have to wait for the large material suitable for keels to be air-dried and they cannot build ships for the time being. In other words, they cannot build Western warships for the time being.
Therefore, Marin planned to take most of the shipbuilders to New York and use red oak to mass-made warships. As for Taiwan Island, only two thousand craftsmen were left, divided into two teams, using the Ming Dynasty's ironwood to build ships. In this way, it would not delay the explosion of ships now, but also obtain a fleet of luxury warships made by ironwood in the future...
...
Speaking of wood, during the inspection of logging in the Taipei Basin these days, Malin actually found that among the many trees that were cut, there were many camphor trees.
Camphor wood itself is a good shipbuilding material because it is resistant to seawater corrosion. However, Marin knew that compared to its use of refining mothballs, shipbuilding is really not a problem.
Because the fir on Taiwan is also an excellent shipbuilding wood. However, the only one that can refine camphor is camphor...
This chapter is not finished yet, please click on the next page to continue reading the exciting content later! So Marin found a carpenter who knows how to use it to classify the wood. For example, all the fragrant fir is left to air-dried, waiting to be used to build a ship. All the chopped camphor woods are picked out for refining camphor...
...
Why do we need to extract camphor? Marin is not to get the mothballs that deworm in the wardrobe, but to get smokeless gunpowder...
I have introduced before (the chapter of being harmonious) that smokeless gunpowder burns too quickly and requires a passivating agent. Marin used paraffin before, but paraffin was average in passivation effect, and camphor is the best passivating agent that Marin can obtain at present.
Marin did not graduate from the chemical engineering major, so he naturally could not find phenylenediamines that are more suitable as passivating agents for smokeless gunpowder. However, camphor is still easy to obtain. It can be said that camphor is the best passivating agent that can be extracted from nature. At the end of the 19th century, in the process of developing smokeless gunpowder, Nobel and other bigwigs chose camphor as passivating agents for new gunpowder. However, the French chose paraffin, which caused problems. Because gunpowder spontaneously ignited, it sank a warship...
Marin is also developing new styles of smokeless gunpowder. Although the output is small, it can also be used to do big things at critical moments.
However, wooden ships are relatively fragile. If a smokeless gunpowder with paraffin is in an accident, the wooden warship will be dead. Therefore, Marin now dares not easily put the smokeless gunpowder with paraffin on the warship. The Frenchman's steel warships at the end of the 19th century can be sunk, let alone the flammable wooden ships?
But smokeless gunpowder is very powerful, especially when it is used as a launching medicine. It is absolutely awesome to use camphor to replace paraffin as a passivating agent and stabilizer for smokeless gunpowder. Once a stable and powerful smokeless gunpowder is obtained, it is time for Marin to apply them to the naval gun...
...
Under Marin's command, the carpenters cut all the cut camphor trees into thin slices. Then they put them in a sealed container and distilled in water. The obtained steam is condensed... and then obtained white crystals of thick camphor and liquid camphor oil...
Camphor oil is not allowed, and after further purification of the thick camphor, you can get the camphor used for military industry that Marin dreams of...
Chapter completed!