(Second update, 10,000 words! Please vote for me!)

Lianyungang is formed by a port and a road. Between the mainland and the East-West Connected Island is the Yingyoumen Strait. The East-West Connected Island is the natural protection of Lianyundao Port. Lianyungang Port occupies almost the entire Yingyoumen Strait.

The Takayu Shipyard is located above the Takayu Gate. Although dams and land were eventually built to form most of the shipyard's foundations, fortunately most of the land was built as docks, and the construction progress was rapid. At the beginning of the year, Takayu Shipyard had completed four shipyards.

There is even a closed dock, which is extremely rare in China and even the Far East at this time, and the other three-room docks are all equipped with iron beam awnings. The construction of the awnings allows the Yingyou Shipyard to operate in rainy weather.

Construction and shipbuilding.

As early as March of the second year of the Republic of China, "China Ocean Shipping Company" was established in Lianyun. Since the establishment of the company, China Ocean Shipping Company has purchased more than 60 ships from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany at extremely low prices.

Old ships that are about 20 years old, and most of them are purchased at the price of "scrap iron".

With the purchase of these "scrap iron", China Ocean Shipping Company has become the largest shipping company in Asia, with 230,000 deadweight tons of merchant ships, which is equivalent to twice the number of merchant ships in Japan.

The tonnage of merchant ships has made China the fifth "largest shipping country" in the world, second only to the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and France, and most of these "scrap iron" are inspected and repaired at the Yingyou Shipyard.

It can be said that to a certain extent, COSCO and Yingyou Shipyard, which both belong to Liuhe, basically complement each other. Although COSCO has only opened up Eurasian ocean routes such as Vladivostok, San Francisco, Lyon, etc., it still ships abroad when a large number of merchant ships are idle.

On the premise of purchasing merchant ships, Yingyou Shipyard still received orders for as many as ten merchant ships.

Today is the day when "Yuanyang 136" is launched. This is the 136th merchant ship of COSCO, a large ship with a displacement of 3,500 tons, and the largest commercial ship built by Yingyou Shipyard. At this time, on the Jiawu slipway, Yuanyang 136 was dressed in red and decorated.

New, as if the groom is about to enter the bridal chamber.

Dozens of workers wearing uniforms of the Eagle Cruise Shipyard, under the command of Director Wei Pingtao, are dismantling the hull brackets step by step. At present, the brackets used to support Ocean 136 have all been removed, and the huge body of No. 136 is parked on the tilted

The slipway is pulled by a special thick hemp cable. Supervisors from Liuhe Company, COSCO, and Yingyou Shipyard lined up, standing on one side of the slipway, taking their positions, staring at No. 136; from all over the world

The factory workers, tall and low, stood outside the dock in an orderly manner, staring at No. 136 in silence.

At this time, Li Zicheng, as the chairman of Liuhe Company, participated in the launching ceremony of No. 136. The passing sea breeze blew his face. Standing facing the bow of the ship, Li Zicheng looked around with a smile on his face.

When I left, everyone still looked at me with confusion. How could they understand?

COSCO's shipping capacity is "excess". At the Yingyou Strait dock alone, there are more than 100,000 tons of merchant ships berthed. Most of the merchant ships are old ships from 1890 to 1900. To buy a 10,000-ton ship in pounds, the average price per ton

But at 1.5 pounds, this price is even 30% cheaper than buying scrap iron. Although there is a surplus of shipping capacity now, everything will change soon, maybe in two months.

First, the ships of Germany and Austria-Hungary, the other belligerent countries, left China one after another or stayed in the port. Affected by the war, the number of merchant ships from Europe will also be greatly reduced. In addition, due to the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and other countries,

A large number of merchant ships will be requisitioned to serve the country's war, and the business of Asian shipping companies, especially the ocean shipping business, will basically come to a standstill. At that time, COSCO can take the opportunity to seize the shipping business left by various countries.

That was a transportation business of up to 50 million tons per year. In history, World War I was a period when Japan's shipping industry developed rapidly. Due to funding from the Japanese government and the vacuum caused by the European War, this

During this period, the number of Japanese merchant ships entering and leaving ports in China and Asia increased year by year. It was during this period that Japan's two major shipping companies, Nippon Yusen Kaisha Co., Ltd. and Osaka Merchant Shipping Co., Ltd., developed rapidly and became internationally renowned merchant shipping companies.

But now, COSCO, founded by himself, has made preparations in advance. In the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean, there are still as many as a hundred merchant ships of nearly 500,000 tons returning to China. Perhaps the Asian shipping market is not enough to feed these nearly hundreds of ships for the time being.

10,000 tons of merchant ships, but as the submarine war begins, all countries will withdraw their merchant ships one after another. At the same time, they can turn over the nearly 700,000 tons of old ships they have on hand twenty or thirty times and sell them to Britain or France.

.

As for COSCO, as long as it maintains 1 million tons of merchant ships, it will be enough to meet the demand in the next few years. In the first two years, it will open up routes and build new ships at the same time. While the new ships are in service, it will sell the old ships to British and French shippers.

Use the money from selling old ships to build new ships, and then use new ship orders to further improve Lianyun's shipbuilding level.

Use foreign capital to build a huge merchant fleet, and then use this merchant fleet to squeeze out the Asia-Pacific shipping market, while at the same time continuously transporting Chinese manufacturing to the world. This process is a cycle, a benign one.

A cycle that is beneficial to Lianyun’s various developments.

"It would be great if I could have tens of millions more."

Sighing, Li Zicheng was filled with annoyance. Although the merchant ships ordered from various countries were all ordered with loans from banks in various countries, he still did not have enough funds to buy more old ships. The old ships were now scrap metal.

But within a few months, the scrap metal will turn into golden lumps.

"A 700,000-ton old ship can already earn tens of millions of pounds, so be satisfied..."

"It's him"

Among the crowd of onlookers, Lu Qiyu, who was holding a camera in her hand, looked at the man standing on the stage and opened her eyes suddenly. It was that hateful man. He worked in the shipyard? It seemed that his status in the shipyard was not low.

Otherwise, he wouldn't be allowed to drink champagne.

Just turn around and draw circles around him and curse him. You have to know his name first.

"Hello, sir, who is that person?"

"you do not know?"

The person being asked was stunned by the words of the girl dressed in Western style next to him.

"Our Lianyungang belongs to him, and he is the current Huaihai Economic Envoy."

What?

This, this hateful man is Li Zicheng. This man is so despicable, almost subconsciously. He once made her admire her so much. Li Zicheng's image in Lu Qiyu's mind has plummeted. There is still a trace of the girl's yearning, admiration, and...

The only fear left was disgust.

"This dead head"

Seeing that the man on the bow platform actually laughed, Lu Qiyu secretly spat in her heart, but she still couldn't help but take a photo of him with her camera.

Li Zicheng, who was standing on the bow of the ship, saw the string on the neck of the champagne bottle tightly connected to the high bow. At this time, a head craftsman approached Wei Pingtao, the shipyard director.

"Director, the auspicious time has come"

Wei Pingtao raised his hand towards a worker holding an axe.

"Prepare - launch"

Hearing the sound, Li Zicheng threw the champagne bottle in his hand towards the bow of the ship. There was a bang and the champagne bottle smashed into pieces. Then, a stream of yellow liquid rose into the sky, multiplying into countless white liquids.

Foam splashed in all directions... Immediately afterwards, the worker raised the shiny axe, raised the ax with his hand, and cut off the thick hemp cables laid on a sloping wooden pier... In an instant, the rope hanging on the bow of the ship was

A colorful ball suddenly turned into an upside-down lotus. Countless dazzling sequins floated out from the core of the flower, floating into the air and into the sea...

Ocean 136 seemed to be attracted by this novel and lively scene. It paused for a moment, and then the stern of the ship slowly slid towards the gentle slope of the dock. Sliding away, Ocean 136 launched into the water with a bang, splashing a wave of waves, and the dock went up and down.

There was a burst of cheers immediately.

Amid the cheers, Ocean 136 slid from slow to fast, all the way to the sea...

"We want to build a ship like this"

In the director's office of Yingyou Shipyard, Li Zicheng showed his concept to Wei Pingtao, a top student who graduated from the Department of Shipbuilding at the University of Glasgow and the youngest son of Wei Han, China's first shipbuilding expert. To be precise, it was the "Freedom of the World War II"

According to the concept of "freewheel", the Germans never built a free wheel, but only adopted segmented construction when manufacturing submarines at the end of the war.

"...It's actually very simple, just use prefabricated components and assembly methods to produce boats like cars."

Li Zicheng showed his "Liberty Wheel" in a cardboard box with a smile on his face. This was the basis for the future Eagle Cruise Shipyard to compete for British and French orders. During World War I, German submarines sank thousands of Allied ships.

The total tonnage of merchant ships exceeds 10 million tons, which means that in the next four years, there will be at least 10 million tons of merchant ship markets waiting to be explored. There is one simple principle to seize the market during the war -

speed and throughput.

While shipyards in the United Kingdom, the United States, France, and Japan take a year and a half to build a 10,000-ton ship, in China, it only takes a month to build a 10,000-ton ship, and millions of tons of merchant ships can be built every year. This will

This prompted British, American, French and even Japanese companies to order merchant ships from Eagle Travel. During the war, the profits brought by orders for millions of tons of merchant ships were staggering.

If you want to get these orders, you must solve the limitations of speed and output, and free wheel is the simplest and most effective method.

Looking at the merchant ship made of more than a dozen cardboard boxes in front of him, Wei Pingtao could hardly believe his eyes. In his opinion, if this method of shipbuilding were successful, it would be no less important to the shipbuilding industry.

The use of yards, slipways and docks is more efficient, and production efficiency is naturally greater, but there are still some problems to be solved...

"Now that we can produce electric welding machines and high-quality welding rods, we need to use welding instead of riveting in shipbuilding. There are two reasons for this. One is that welding can greatly speed up the construction of ships, and the other is that we lack experience.

Shipbuilding riveters, of course, there is another not unimportant benefit of welding. For such a 10,000-ton ship, welding can save 200 tons of steel than riveting. This means that for every fifty ships, one can be saved.

The steel required for a 10,000-ton ship..."

At this time, Wei Pingtao devoted all his attention to the dozen cartons. It seemed that this was the chairman's own idea. From the perspective of shipbuilding, these segments were unreasonable, but this opened a revelation for him.

, a boat can be built in sections like a car, it just needs to be properly decomposed.

Although welding is not used in shipbuilding in various countries, Yingyou has applied welding technology when building inland river ships. There is no problem in terms of equipment or technology, but there is another problem.

"Chairman, do we need to build so many ships?"

As the shipbuilding director of Yingyou Shipyard, Wei Pingtao gets a headache every day when he sees the merchant ships parked in Boding Yard. It is not the most important thing that those ships occupy the company's funds. The most important thing is that there are a large number of idle ships in the company.

Will they still order merchant ships if the shipping capacity is sufficient? Although they are still ordering merchant ships, Wei Pingtao knows that it is the chairman's request. If one day the chairman changes his mind, perhaps Yingyou will be the second shipping bureau.

"Don't worry about orders. As long as you can design this kind of ship, at least in the next few years, we won't need to worry about orders at all."

Perhaps because he was afraid that he would be suspicious, Li Zicheng then added.

"Now the European War is about to break out. Once the European War starts, the spring of the shipping industry will come. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of tons, even millions of tons of merchant ships will be absorbed by the huge market.

By then, the most important thing is not the market, but whether we can build merchant ships that can meet market demand."

It's still a buyer's market now, but by the end of the year at the latest, it will be a seller's market.

"Chairman, now that there is mediation from various countries, we can't bet our money on this. This business field is not a battlefield..."

Before Wei Pingtao could finish speaking, Li Zicheng waved his hand.

"This business field is a battlefield and a casino. Now I am gambling. How about you tell me whether I can design such a merchant ship?"

Free wheel, free wheel
To be continued...