Late Ming Dynasty: Conquering the world starting from riding and cutting

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After saying that, Li Chun paid attention to the surprised looks of Qin Hao and others, picked up the tools and started to demonstrate directly.

Pick up a handful of coarse salt from the crystallization tank, add water, stir and mix to form brine, and then pour the brine into a tight cotton plate pressed with cotton to filter.

A lot of impurities, black and yellow, can be seen on the filtered cotton plate. After being filtered through several layers of cotton boards, the salt water is already clear and translucent.

Then pour the brine into the charcoal again, and use the adsorption properties of the charcoal to remove other impurities.

Absorb all visible and invisible impurities, leaving only the purest original solution.

Qin Hao dipped a finger in the filtered salt water, put it on his tongue and licked it. It seemed that he could no longer taste the bitter sea salt taste before. "I didn't expect that Li Chun would actually do it!"

After several twists and turns, the salt water was finally poured into several large pots. Unlike other pots, the pots were inlaid with copper plates to prevent the salt water from corroding the pots.

A quarter of an hour later, the water in the pot had dried up, revealing a layer of clean salt on top. Li Chun picked up a shovel and kept turning and mashing it like a street vendor frying chestnuts. As the heat in the pot increased, As it rose, Qin Hao could clearly smell the salt.

"Sir, Zhuge Xuan, come and see, what should such salt be like?" Li Chun shoveled out a spoonful of milky white salt and placed it in front of the two of them.

Zhu Ge

As an excellent internal affairs officer, Zhuge Xuan is well aware of the prices of various types of goods on the market, not to mention necessities such as salt.

At 300 yuan per pound, it is not expensive at all, and the demand is not small!

This is Zhuge Xuan’s judgment!

If the refined salt and sugar in the territory can be sold to Jiangnan, and the money earned can be used to buy back a large amount of materials needed in the territory, then Qin Hao's territory will soon enter a period of rapid development.

With such a fixed and reliable source of salary, there is no need to worry about achieving your great goals!

However, there are still two issues that remain unresolved.

One is the port, and the other is the merchant ship.

Inform Zhuge Xuan and Li Chun of this trouble.

Zhuge Xuan began to ponder with great interest, while Li Chun looked very uninterested and shook his head.

"My lord, I have already prepared for this port matter." Zhuge Xuan put forward his opinion confidently.

Being reminded like this, Qin Hao just remembered that he really had a ready-made one, San Salvador in Spain, which he had just won before.

The geographical location is first-class, the harbor is wide and the water is deep. It is definitely an excellent port. Moreover, the future Keelung Port is nearby, so there is no need to choose another place for future expansion.

"As for this merchant ship, I'm afraid I have to trouble Brother Li Chun." Zhuge Xuan smiled and focused on Li Chun again.

Li Chun said he couldn't do it, and the reason was that there was no one.

Shipbuilding is different from the previous waterwheel repairs. A ship requires at least 4 to 50 qualified craftsmen, and specialized carpenters are needed for the hull, bottom, sails, and keel.

"If you can't build a big ship, can you build a small one?" Qin Hao didn't dare to hope for a large ship of 200 to 300 tons. He does not have the strength at the moment, but a small ship of 20 to 300 tons should not be a problem for Li Chun.

The small fishing boats on the sea that are fishing are all made by him. Just make them bigger so they can cross the strait.

"A small boat that hits the water with wheels, 2 feet 1 (7 meters) long, 6 feet (3 meters) wide, with an outer frame of 1 foot each, and 4 wheels inside. The wheel head enters the water about 1 foot. The speed of the boat is much faster than that of a paddle. .

The front of the ship is 8 feet long, the middle cabin is 1 feet long, and the stern is 7 feet long. There are boards nailed to the hut, leading from the front to the back, and lying down on both sides. Each board is 3 feet long and 5 feet wide.

This is a wheeled boat from the Ming Dynasty, with a draft of 100 tons (33 tons) and a capacity of 40 to 50 people. "

"Can it be made?"

"Yes, with three or five carpenters and me, it can be done in half a month."

"Okay, okay!" Qin Hao was overjoyed when he heard what he said. He grabbed his hand and wanted to go back. "In that case, without further ado, let's do it today. I'm here to help."

"Sir, please be patient."

Li Chun grabbed Qin Hao and expressed his remaining concerns: "Even if there is a boat, I can't go."

"Why?" Qin Hao turned his head and looked at Li Chun, feeling greatly confused.

Why go there if there is a boat?

Li Chun's answer was that there was a shortage of people, what kind of people, qualified captains, first mates, and all kinds of sailors.

This is a more difficult problem than shipbuilding.

According to the current customs of sailing ships, a 200-ton merchant ship must be equipped with at least 2 to 30 talents of various types before it can go to sea, and this 33-ton wheeled boat must also have 4 or 5 people who know the waterways and operate it, otherwise it will go to sea rashly. , is definitely the result of feeding fish.

Don't think that the distance between Taiwan and the mainland is just a strait, and you can float across it even if you want to be in a bathtub.

In fact, the Taiwan Strait has strong winds and high waves, making it an extremely dangerous water area for people in the sailing age. There is a saying in the folk songs of southern Fujian: "Half of the performance is left over, and there is nothing to see when you are on stage."

This means that only half of those who fled arrived in Fujian, and the remaining half disappeared when they arrived in Taiwan. For some reason, the bathtub couldn't withstand the strong winds and waves, and it sank before it passed the Penghu Islands. This was the end of wandering. However, if there is a large ship to pick up and drop off, it will be another peaceful scene and almost no damage will be caused.

Since there will be no talent, recruitment will be done soon. This was the first idea that came to Qin Hao's mind, but he gave up after thinking about it. This was definitely not a good idea.

Regardless of whether you have money to recruit, those who know the waterways and can fire cannons are the Ming pirates, Dutch, and Spaniards from Southeast Asia. They have been roaming the sea for a long time, and they are not easy to impress.

Even if he could recruit them, Qin Hao wouldn't trust them to hand over the ship and cargo.

This is obviously impossible!

Those who make a living on the sea are licking blood from the tip of a knife. They can live one day at a time. Who knows whether they will take the money and escape. They will carry their own weight with the boat. When the time comes, the tail will not fall off, and they will be the ones who suffer.

So the safest thing is to train your own people.

But there is a saying that goes, ten years of army, one hundred years of navy.

Within four or five years, Qin Hao's desire to have his own merchant fleet was nothing more than a dream.

It takes a year or two to train even a small sailor on the ship. As for getting new sailors on board, it will be a problem for your merchant ship to even leave the port, because they can't tell the difference between the main sail and the side sail.

Not to mention the position of captain. In this era without GPS positioning, the captain is the soul of a ship. They can find the right path based on a navigation chart and avoid getting lost. Of course, this also requires experienced experience.

This dilemma is like when a large company recruits new interns. The new employee happily goes to the interview with a resume, but is told by HR that the new position he is applying for also requires three years of employment experience.

What a cheat!

I want to hire new people with low wages, but also need the new people to have experience and be able to start working immediately. Isn't this a peach?

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