The Rise of the European Emperor

The Penghu Islands are an island that lacks fresh water. There are no rivers, only some small lakes with accumulated water. Because it is exactly in the "Pacific water vapor shadow area" of Taiwan Island, the Penghu Islands have become a rare relatively arid area on the southeast coast, and the wind is strong.

The characteristic of Taiwan Island is that it is rainy in the east coast and the north coast, while the rainfall in the west coast is relatively small. For example, the Budai Salt Field on the southwest coast of Taiwan Island is a well-known Pacific water vapor shadow area, with many sunny days, which is very suitable for drying salt.

Speaking of which, the Penghu Islands, which belong to the Pacific Ocean water vapor shadow area of ​​Taiwan Island, are also suitable for drying salt. However, Marin does not intend to promote it.

Because, if you really want to make sun-dried salt here, it will be miserable if the Portuguese learn it. The vast coast of North Africa is more suitable for drying salt. If the Portuguese engage in drying salt on the coasts of North Africa and West Africa, Marin's salt cooking business will be washed away immediately. Therefore, he would rather have good technology than use it, and insist on cooking salt. After all, the cost of boiling salt with coal is much lower than that of firewood, which can form a cost advantage.

But because there are no rivers, there is a lack of freshwater ports on the Penghu Islands. In this way, warships docked at the Penghu Water Village for a long time will be easily eaten by shipworms... So, how did the Daming Navy solve this problem?

"Use iron wood to build the bottom of the ship, and the ship maggots can't eat it anymore!" explained a shipbuilder at Longjiang Bao Shipyard.

"What?" Marin was dumbfounded. He didn't expect that the people of the Ming Dynasty solved the shipworm problem so simply and rudely. Iron wood, that is a hard wood that even shipworms can't chew. However, it seems a bit extravagant to use it to make the bottom of a boat...

Marin didn't know that although there were not many iron trees in this era, they were not too few. Because of the excellent characteristics of iron wood, it was cut down in large quantities and used to build ships, furniture, and even city gates. Therefore, iron wood is also consumed in large quantities. In later generations, because of too much consumption, Tielimu has been listed as a national second-class protected plant by the country.

But in this era, iron wood is not scarce. Even in the Ming Dynasty, there were warships made of iron and wood, with 400 materials, and the cost was only seven or eight hundred taels of silver, which included the cost of craftsmen's labor and so on. Zheng He's treasure ships on his voyages were so big, but each cost only about 2,000 taels of silver.

According to the shipbuilder of Longjiang Bao Shipyard rewarded by the Ming court, the cost of building a large ship like Marin's 500-ton warship is all made of iron wood, and the cost is only three or four thousand taels. If only iron wood is used for the bottom and sides, the cost is only about two thousand taels...

"Fuck—" Marin couldn't help but swear.

One must know that his 500-ton battleship costs tens of thousands of gold coins if it uses oak wood. A gold coin is worth 1.14 taels of silver based on the ratio of 1 to 12 gold and silver coins. In other words, the cost of the Marin warship is as high as 11,400 taels.

Even if cheap American wood is used to build ships in the future, it will only be half the cost. After all, the wages of European shipbuilders are really high... plus the price of paint and drying oil, you can't save it...

But if the ship is built in Daming, all iron wood is used, and the cost is much lower than that in Europe. Of course, the premise is that the shipbuilders of Ming Dynasty with low wages must be used...

Calculated according to the current salary, the annual salary of a shipbuilder in the Ming Dynasty is only a few taels of silver, and the annual salary of a top shipbuilder does not exceed 10 taels. And the shipbuilders of Beihai State, even apprentice shipbuilders, had a daily salary of 3 Finneys and an annual salary of 21.7 taels. And the annual salary of an experienced shipbuilder can be equivalent to more than 40 taels... In terms of salary alone, the difference is several times...

Therefore, Marin decided in an instant—to also set up a shipyard here in Daming, and directly import plates from Daming to build ships, and the cost can be extremely low.

However, according to the craftsmen of Longjiang Treasure Shipyard, the shipbuilding of Daming was built in sections, and built step by step according to watertight compartments. This is not a problem. The problem is that most of the shipbuilding timber in the Ming Dynasty had been cut, and there were very few large logs that could be used as keels. Even if there is, it has just been harvested and has not had time to be divided. But it takes a year or two to build the keel of a sea-going ship... Therefore, Marin's idea of ​​using European shipbuilding technology to explode the ship on Daming's side fell through for the time being, and it will be feasible at least two years later. Moreover, it is necessary to order enough aniseed ingredients for the keel now...

In this regard, Marin is also deeply helpless. He had thought about transporting the keel from the Americas, but the keel was tens of meters long, so it was not suitable for ocean shipping at all. Therefore, the shipyard on the Taiwan Island side can only wait for the keel aniseed material on the Ming side to dry enough.

But in any case, it is necessary to use iron wood as a side guard. On the side of iron wood, it is difficult for ordinary iron ball shells to penetrate. Wrap it with an iron sheet, it's really invincible...

However, it is said that the number of shipbuilding craftsmen provided by the Ming Dynasty seems to be a bit too much. Therefore, Marin does not intend to keep these craftsmen here to build ships. After all, they still have to wait for the aniseed materials suitable for use as keels to dry out, so they cannot build ships for the time being. In other words, it is temporarily impossible to build Western-style warships.

Therefore, Marin intends to bring most of the shipbuilders to New York to mass-produce warships from red oak. As for Taiwan Island, only 2,000 craftsmen are left, divided into two teams, and use Daming iron wood to build ships. In this way, without delaying the current explosion of the ship, you can also obtain a fleet of luxury warships built by iron wood in the future...

...

Speaking of wood, these days, during the inspection of logging in the Taipei Basin, Marin discovered that there are many camphor trees among the many trees that have been cut.

Camphor wood itself is a good shipbuilding material because it is resistant to seawater corrosion. However, Marin knew that compared with its use to extract mothballs, shipbuilding is really not a problem.

Because the cedar on Taiwan Island is also an excellent shipbuilding timber. However, the only thing that can extract camphor is camphor wood...

So, Marin found a carpenter who knew how to classify the wood. For example, all the cedars are left to dry, waiting to be used for shipbuilding. And the chopped camphor wood is all picked out and used to refine camphor...

...

Why extract camphor? Marin didn't want to get mothballs to repel insects in the closet, but to get smokeless gunpowder...

It has been introduced before (the chapter being harmonized), because smokeless gunpowder burns too fast, a passivator is required. Marin used paraffin wax before, but the passivation effect of paraffin wax is average, and camphor is the best passivation agent that Marin can currently obtain.

Marin did not graduate from a chemical engineering major, so naturally he couldn't find a more suitable phenylenediamine as a passivator for smokeless gunpowder. However, camphor is still readily available. 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 unanimously chose camphor as the passivating agent for new gunpowder. However, the French used paraffin, which caused problems all the time. They also sunk one of their battleships because of the spontaneous combustion of gunpowder...

Marin is also working on a new type of smokeless gunpowder. Although the output is small, it can be used to do great things at critical moments.

However, wooden boats are relatively fragile. If there is an accident with the paraffin-added smokeless gunpowder, the wooden warship will be dead. Therefore, Marin dare not easily put paraffin-added smokeless gunpowder on the battleship now. The steel warships of the French at the end of the 19th century could be sunk, not to mention the flammable wooden ships?

But smokeless gunpowder is powerful, especially as a propellant. It is absolutely awesome for bombarding enemy ships. Therefore, Marin has long been waiting to replace paraffin with camphor as a passivator and stabilizer for smokeless gunpowder. Once the stable and powerful smokeless gunpowder is obtained, it is time for Marin to apply them to naval guns...

...

Under Marin's command, the carpenters sliced ​​all the chopped camphor wood into thin slices. Then, put it in a sealed container and distill it over water. The resulting vapors are condensed... to give white crystals of crude camphor, and liquid camphor oil...

Regardless of the camphor oil, after further purification of the crude camphor, the camphor for military industry that Marin dreams of can be obtained...

And camphor is one of the important goals of Marin's occupation of Taiwan Island. After all, later generations of Taiwan Island are known as the "Kingdom of Camphor", and there are so many camphor trees on the island...