The Rise of the European Emperor

How important is whaling? The meat of a whale accounts for half or more of its weight. If a 50-ton sperm whale is killed, 25 tons of whale meat can be obtained. Even a smaller baleen whale weighs about 25 tons and can produce more than ten tons of whale meat.

what does that mean? It means that the meat from one whale can feed many people! If 25 tons of meat are produced according to the weight of the sperm whale, it is 55,000 pounds of meat! Even if each person eats a luxury of two pounds of meat per day, it is enough for 27,500 people to eat for a day. In fact, for the poor in this era, if each person can eat 1 pound of food per day, it is considered a good life, let alone meat?

According to the standard of 1 pound of meat per person per day, 55,000 pounds of meat can supply the daily consumption of 55,000 people. As long as 365 sperm whales are caught, 55,000 people can be supplied with food for a year. Not to mention that whales also provide a large amount of whale meat at the same time, and whale bones can also be used as fertilizer to fertilize the field.

Moreover, in this era, there are very few people hunting whales around the world. Even if there are whales that are hunted, they are small whales that are hunted with small boats. The aboriginal whalers of this era dare not mess with such a large whale. Because the boat capsized when it was gently pulled by a large whale.

Not only that, but there were very few whaling races in this era. It can even be said that there were very few fishing boats at sea in this era. Even if there are, most of them are small fishing boats operating in the offshore, and there are no super-efficient fishing trawls of later generations, only small hand-drawn casting nets, and the catch is extremely limited.

This also led to the extremely rich fishery resources in the sea in this era, which also means that whales have extremely rich food sources. Therefore, there are far more whales in this era than in later generations. I dare not say anything else, but in areas where small fish and shrimps are abundant, there must be a large number of whales waiting to eat nearby...

In places like the Newfoundland fishing grounds, fishermen can see the water jets sprayed by whales every day. Even in the North Sea, you can often see whales spouting water. But even fishermen who know how to hunt whaling often dare not do it easily. Because their boats cannot withstand the drag of large and medium-sized whales.

That's why Marin asked people to develop the whaling cannon. It is not because the harpoon of the whaling gun shoots fast and can hunt fast-swimming whales, but because the whaling gun is so powerful that it can penetrate deeply into the whale's body, and even hit the vital parts of the whale, quickly making the whale lose its action ability, there is no behavior of towing fishing boats.

After all, no matter how big and strong a whale is, it will lose its combat effectiveness if it is pierced into its internal organs by a harpoon fired by a whaling cannon. Just like when a person is stabbed into the internal organs by a knife, he will quickly lose the ability to fight back.

In traditional whaling, the javelin-style harpoons held by fishermen penetrate the outer skin of the whale at most. Although it can get stuck in the whale meat, it is not fatal all at once. In that case, the whale would run wildly for its life because of the severe pain from the skin. It would be fine if you dragged the whaling boat forward, at worst, it would take a while to let the whale run out of energy, and at the same time, give the whale time to lose too much blood and die.

But this process is very dangerous,

It's okay to be dragged forward by a whale, it's a lot of fun if the whale suddenly dives to the bottom...

The whaling harpoon thrown by humans pierces into the skin of the whale, just like hurting the skin of a human being, and can only cause painful extracutaneous damage to the whale. After the whales suffer from such painful skin trauma, they will often flee crazily because of the pain, causing high-speed drag on the whaling boat...

But if you use a powerful whaling cannon, it will be different. Driven by the whaling cannon, the harpoon can easily penetrate into the body of the whale, or even into the internal organs of the whale, because of its fast speed and great power. The harpoon driven by the explosive force of gunpowder can also cause great damage to the target whale and make the whale lose its combat effectiveness in a very short period of time. In this way, the possibility of whaling fishing boats being dragged by whales and causing capsizing is greatly reduced.

Therefore, Marin felt that the importance of such things as whaling guns was too high. Once the research and development is successful, the North Sea country will have endless whale meat.

You must know that after World War II, due to the serious lack of food and meat, Japan was forced to dispatch fishing boats to hunt and kill whales in order to obtain enough meat to make up for the lack of domestic food.

At that time, many of the children who grew up after World War II, that is, the elderly in Japan in the 21st century, grew up eating whale meat. Even the school cafeteria provided cheap and easy-to-obtain whale meat. This has also led to the fact that in the 21st century, many elderly Japanese are very fond of whale meat, and even regard whale meat as a kind of belief. Young Japanese in the new century don't like to eat whale meat. Because they have not experienced the era of food shortage in Japan just after World War II, they naturally don't feel much about eating whale meat.

At the end of World War II, Japan had a population of more than 70 million, but most of them relied on whale meat to supplement their nutrition. Therefore, it can be seen how large-scale whaling was in Japan at that time. In the 1960s, Japan had a total of seven whaling fleets, with an average annual catch of 20,000 whales, which could obtain more than 100,000 to 200,000 tons of whale meat. At its peak in 1962, Japan’s Antarctic whaling catch was as high as 300,000 tons, accounting for 78% of the world’s whaling.

That is to say, at that time, the whale meat obtained by Japan every year was as high as hundreds of thousands of tons, so that the children who grew up in Japan after the war had enough whale meat. Therefore, those children became old people decades later, still obsessed with whale meat, which contributed to Japan's launch of the world anti-whaling agreement, and continued to kill whales in large numbers in the name of "scientific research" to satisfy those who have food. Japan's elderly demand for whale meat situation.

What is the concept of hundreds of thousands of tons of whale meat? 1 ton of whale meat is 2,200 pounds, enough to feed 2,200 people for a day (each person eats one pound a day). One hundred thousand tons is equivalent to allowing 600,000 people to eat one pound of whale meat every day for a full year. To get 100,000 tons of whale meat, you only need to kill tens of thousands of whales.

After World War II, Japan may need to send ocean-going whaling ships to fish in the waters near Antarctica. Because whales in the northern hemisphere were hunted too much back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But in this era, the whaling industry in the northern hemisphere did not start to develop. As the sharpest whaling weapon, the whaling cannon has not yet appeared.

Therefore, in the Newfoundland fishing grounds alone, tens of thousands of whales are hunted every year, as long as there are enough whaling guns and fishing boats, it can be easily done. At that time, whale meat alone will be able to feed hundreds of thousands of people, not to mention that there will be a large number of common fish harvested in Newfoundland fishing grounds.

In the next few days, the North Sea State will first arrest hundreds of thousands of Taino people on Haiti Island as serfs to help cultivate the land. But at the beginning, the arable land hadn't been well developed, so they could only rely on the Beihai country to provide food to feed the Taino serfs.

And one person consumes hundreds of pounds of food every year, tens of millions of pounds for 100,000 people, and hundreds of millions of pounds for hundreds of thousands of people. But now that food is so expensive, Marin can't afford to use all food to feed those Taino serfs.

Therefore, it is also a good choice to use fishing and whaling to fill the food gap of the Taino serfs in the first few years. Moreover, while obtaining a large amount of whale meat, you can also obtain a lot of whale oil, which can be used to make products such as candles and soaps.

Thinking of this, Marin's eyes suddenly brightened. Because, he has already thought of a good way to make a fortune - selling soap to Daming!

Previously, Europeans mainly relied on animal fats, such as tallow and suet, to make soap, which cost a lot. Marin previously asked his men to hunt whales with javelins thrown by humans. Although whales can be caught, the number of whales that may be killed is limited, and the amount of whale oil obtained is also small.

However, once the whaling cannon is successfully developed, coupled with the application of large whaling ships, the supply of whale oil in the North Sea State will be extremely alarming.

But with so much whale oil, how to use it? In addition to being used to make candles, it seems to be used to make soap, which is also a very good use.

You know, when watching historical time travel in previous lives, making soap is one of the most powerful tricks to travel through ancient China, and almost every time traveler will use it.

The raw materials for making soap are also very simple, nothing more than animal fat and caustic soda. Caustic soda is mainly obtained by reacting caustic soda and lime, and the cost is relatively low. The only trouble is the acquisition of animal fat.

In the Ming Dynasty, animal fat was regarded as a treasure in people's eyes, and it was an important way to obtain oil and water. Therefore, in ancient China, both lard and sheep fat were very rare. Sheep oil was also an important lamp oil raw material in ancient China. As for pork, it was a very important source of oil and water for the ancient Chinese, and it was extremely popular.

Therefore, in ancient China, the most difficult raw material to obtain soap was animal fat. To mass-produce soap, there must be a large source of animal fat. Therefore, those traversers who made soap had to intersect with the grassland nomads to obtain sufficient animal fat. Otherwise, it is impossible to make soap normally and make a lot of money.

But Marin is different. He now occupies the Newfoundland fishing grounds and has the ability to control large areas of the North Sea fishing grounds. Once the whaling gun is successfully developed, the source of whale oil is almost continuous.

With whale oil and a large amount of cheap alkali imported from Daming, soap and even scented soap can be produced on a large scale. At that time, large-scale sales of soap to the Ming Dynasty can be called a very important source of income.

With such a huge market in the Ming Dynasty, Marin can conclude that the sale of soap will definitely make him a lot of money, counting the money until he draws the scriptures...

Moreover, based on the production of whale oil, Marin can conclude that the production of soap will be very large at that time, so large that the sales of whale oil soap will smooth out the trade deficit between him and Daming, and may even produce surplus.

After all, Daming does not have such a thing as soap. Not only can Marin mass-produce soap with sufficient whale oil, but he can also set the price high so as to generate a lot of profit. In this way, Marin does not have to worry about the influx of his own silver into Daming. Because, the soap made of whale oil will help him smooth out the trade deficit, which will avoid the embarrassment of buying goods from Daming with only money...