Valley Emperor

In terms of equipment and other construction technologies, the current shipbuilding industry of the Datang Empire has already fully met the conditions for constructing 10,000-ton ships, and it is also very mature. The only restrictions are capital and the market.

Because the construction of a 10,000-ton ship requires a larger dock, and building a 10,000-ton dock is not an hour, the amount of work is still quite large, the construction period is long, and the investment is large.

In addition to the dock, there is also a large amount of equipment. There are many large-scale equipment required to build a 10,000-ton ship, and each piece of equipment is very expensive.

This also means that if the shipyard wants to upgrade and build a 10,000-ton dock, it needs to invest heavily in advance.

But now the 10,000-ton ships are expensive, the operating cost is high, and there are few ports that can be berthed. Many companies still have great concerns about the use of 10,000-ton ships. Therefore, the market for 10,000-ton ships is actually not large.

In addition to warships, the current relatively large market for ships of 10,000 tons should be luxury passenger ships. When major shipping companies build large luxury passenger ships, it is not about operating costs, but about the company's brand image. At present, the people in the empire are used to traveling on these large passenger ships.

At the same time, it is supported by a large amount of subsidies from the Immigration and Reclamation Division. Therefore, although the operation cost is high, it will not lose money.

However, in other fields, there are very few 10,000-ton ships. At least for now, there are no 10,000-ton ships in cargo ships. Some time ago, there was hope to break through this limit, that is, oil tankers, but after comprehensive consideration by Imperial Oil Company, it is still Instead of choosing a 10,000-ton tanker, they chose a 3,000-ton small tanker.

As for ordinary freighters, not to mention, basically the newly built freighters are concentrated between 2,000 to 3,000 tons, a few are 4,000 or 5,000 tons, and very few have more than 5,000 tons. Needless to say, ten thousand tons tons.

Because the navigation industry of the Tang Empire generally believed that ocean-going ships, especially freighters, should use less than 5,000 tons, preferably 2,000 to 3,000 tons of ships, and they must be the most cost-effective.

The cargo that can be loaded with this tonnage is not too small, and it is often able to meet the general demand.

At the same time, ships of this tonnage can easily find ports to dock and load and unload goods when they are in overseas territories or indigenous control areas, which is very important.

At the same time, this tonnage can also use sail power. The steam engine can keep the average speed of the ship during the voyage, and at the same time, the sail can be used for most of the voyage to save coal.

Now even sails can directly use various mechanical equipment to replace manpower, which also means that manpower costs are greatly reduced.

Today, a 3,000-ton sail bulk carrier actually does not require much more personnel than the previous 5-600-ton sail wooden ship. Sometimes, if the owner is bold enough, he can still increase the cost. The next part.

However, if the tonnage is too large, the sails will be useless and can only rely on the power of the steam engine, which will consume a large amount of coal.

Although the Datang Empire is already all over the world, coal warehouses are built in every port that can go, and coal is also developed in various overseas territories. For example, in recent years, ships in Europe and even in the Atlantic region have used a large amount of coal. Imported from the UK.

There is a lot of coal in the UK, and most of them are anthracite, and the quality is quite good.

Datang people, who rarely go to indigenous countries to make large-scale investments, could not resist the temptation this time. They went to the UK to invest in coal mines and hired local people to mine a large amount of coal. The main customers of these coals are naturally Datang ships.

However, even if coal warehouses are set up in supply ports around the world, the coal still costs money, and the price is not low.

Over the years, the prices of many industrial raw materials have gone down and up, but generally speaking, bulk goods, such as steel, are still mainly down.

But coal is an exception. Although the output of coal is rising sharply every year, the consumption is also rising. Therefore, after so many years, although we have not been able to continue Zhangjia, we have not cut prices, which are basically the same as ten years ago. s price.

This also means that the coal price is actually not low, which also leads to the high operating cost of pure steam ships.

This is why the Tang Empire is now more inclined to choose ships with both sails and sails, rather than pure steam-powered ships.

Under the influence of many factors, the current Datang's navigation industry mainly tends to choose several thousand-ton motor boats, but pure steam vessels of larger tonnage.

In this way, the shipbuilding industry has made ships in this field cheaper and cheaper, because the technology of this 2,000-ton ship is very mature, and at the same time, there are a lot of orders~www.wuxiaspot.com~ makes it more and more The more shipyards poured into it, the entire Datang Empire has the ability to build two thousand to three thousand ton merchant ships, at least dozens.

There are many shipyards, although there are still many orders, but the competition is also large. Under the competition, the price of ships of this level is gradually reduced.

This, in turn, makes shipowners more inclined to choose ships of this tonnage.

This has to be said to be an irony.

In order to change this situation, I am afraid that the cost of shipbuilding will be further reduced, and more importantly, the price of coal must continue to decline, and then there will be more large-tonnage terminals in various places, which will lead to the reduction of procurement and operating costs. , ships of about 10,000 tons can appear in batches.

However, although they are all ships of several thousand tons now, it is very different from before. The same number of sailors used to only be able to support sailing wooden boats of several hundred tons, but now, it is only a little bit to drive a sailboat of several thousand tons. No problem.

The combination of many factors has led to a rapid increase in the total tonnage of Datang's ships, and it has risen to the current horror data of more than four million tons.

But so many ships are still not enough for the huge Tang Empire.

This is also the reason why countless ships are still under construction in the docks of major shipyards, and there are more orders lined up on hand.

The Transportation Department of the Datang Empire believes that the current total tonnage demand of the Empire for ships is maintained at around five million tons, and this demand is still growing rapidly.

Judging from the current development of the empire, in ten years, the total tonnage of ships will reach 10 million tons.

If we continue to maintain the momentum of development, after 20 or 30 years, optimistic estimates, this number may become 20 million tons.

(Tianjin)