Chapter 39: Discovery
(It's home, there was no update yesterday, I really didn't have time for these two days, I'm sorry, I'm trying to update 6,000 words today.) Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. biquge。 info)
With a longitude of 7.26 west and a latitude of 49.69 north, this is their final destination.
It is 120 kilometres from Penzance, the southernmost town in England, and 53 kilometres southwest of the Isles of Scilly. Between the coordinates and the Isles of Scilly, there are three shipping routes, which are the trade routes between the three cities of Ireland and France.
However, since it is still twenty kilometers from the nearest route, under normal circumstances, the Ranger will not be spotted by passing ships.
At six o'clock in the evening of October 18, the Celtic Sea at 49 degrees north latitude was already pitch black, and the Ranger slowly dropped its anchor and quietly stopped on the endless sea.
According to the normal schedule, it should be dinner time for the crew, except for the crew on duty, most of them will be ready to rest after a short period of entertainment.
But today was very different from usual, because all the crew members got nervous after dinner, and gathered in the lounge to wait for the arrival of the tour.
Zhou You didn't make everyone wait for a long time, and soon, he took the management Chukel and Lin Jiapei to the lounge and stood in front of everyone.
At this moment, in addition to the two cooks, there were also two signalmen on duty, and all the people on the ship were waiting for the opening of the tour.
"As you may already know, we've arrived at our destination. I'm not going to tell you where this is, but from now on, all the Ranger sources are shut down, and we're going to go into the most stringent phase. In addition to facing the most stringent management, we will also enter the most intense salvage procedures. I have only one request for everyone, and that is to work hard for a month, and then enjoy life to the fullest with huge rewards and vacations, and if anyone ruins this salvage plan, they will face my most cruel revenge. I'm done talking, and now I'm asking Director Chuckle to start assigning tasks. ”
Zhou You gave up his position, but his eyes were still roaming the crowd, his gaze was so cold that almost everyone dared not look directly into his gaze.
In fact, the division of labor of everyone on the ship has long been fixed, and after several salvages, everyone clearly knows the scope of their work.
Only the Spaniards who had just boarded the ship did not know what they should do, but they were originally doing auxiliary work, and they could not affect their normal movements.
Chakel quickly arranged the work of the various groups, the two speedboats were lowered to the surface by the crane, and the crew began to methodically begin to install the fuel tanks, refuel, and debug the engines.
Half an hour later, the two speedboats, with their detection equipment, began to probe in a clockwise direction, with the Ranger as the central point, and gradually probed to the periphery.
Although you can still remember the latitude and longitude points clearly, it is not too easy to find an accurate direction in the middle of the sea.
It is not yet a posterity, and the accuracy of satellite positioning is not so high. What's more, Zhou You didn't dare to keep GPS on, because he drove it for too long, and he exposed his position.
Therefore, after determining the approximate location, it is still directly relied on manual work to find the exact location of the Royal Merchant.
However, they had now determined the approximate direction, and the difference would not be more than a kilometer, so Zhou You believed that they would be able to find the Royal Merchant in half an hour at most.
Unlike the Java Sea, the Celtic Sea is an important node of the North Atlantic Current, and there is much more sediment on the seafloor than in the Java Sea. In the historical record, the Royal Merchant was wrapped in a thick layer of sediment, and at its thickest point, the sediment covered more than two meters.
However, in the face of modern detection instruments, nearly half a million silver coins are the most conspicuous target. The magnetic field reaction they form cannot be covered by two meters of sediment, even twenty meters of sediment.
Therefore, soon Yang Enquan's speedboat sent back a signal, and a strong metal reaction was found on the seabed less than 300 meters away from the Ranger.
Lin Jiapei gave an order, the Ranger started an engine, the Ranger started slowly, and then turned off the engine, and the Ranger relied on inertia and slowly drifted to the predetermined position.
This time, all the instruments on the Ranger were also turned on, and they began to explore a sea area in various ways. Metal detection, sonar detection, including imaging equipment are all turned on.
Various images of the seabed were quickly transmitted to the control room, and Zhou You saw the image map transmitted back from the seabed, and then recalled the information of the Royal Merchant that he had watched at the beginning, and soon confirmed that it was under the Ranger, which was his target this time.
The two speedboats were quickly recovered, and this time the Ranger was completely shut down, leaving only one generator set to continue working.
Over the next month, the two generator sets will take turns to provide power and power for the work on the Ranger.
Until now, most of the crew did not know where the Ranger was or what the goal was this time. They only know that after discovering the target, they must cooperate with all of them and salvage all the targets as quickly as possible.
The salvage of the Royal Merchant is far simpler than that of the Mercedes, first of all, the sea where it sank was only 150 meters deep, which is completely different from the Mercedes's depth of nearly 2,000 meters. Secondly, the terrain here is flat, and it is much less difficult to salvage on a flat seabed than in the mountains under the sea.
The biggest difficulty in salvaging the Royal Merchant was the bad weather here, followed by the thick sediment on the seabed.
The problem of sediment is very easy to solve, relying on the underwater high-pressure water cannon, which can easily wash away all the sediment around the Royal Merchant.
But the problem of weather is not so easy to solve.
It's autumn, the unpredictable season over the North Atlantic, and according to the weather forecast, a strong typhoon will pass in just a week.
But compared to the typhoon, Zhou You is more concerned about the vigilance of the British side, so he also has to take risks to salvage at this time.
Liang Hao and Zhou Minghong carefully controlled the two robots to dive underwater, first drilling holes in the seabed near the Royal Merchant, and laying two wedges. Then the faucet of the water gun is fixed on the two wedges, so that it can ensure that the water gun will not fly around during the working time, and the muzzle of the gun is always aimed in the direction of the Royal Merchant.
As the mighty jets of water began to wash over the sand of the Royal Merchant, the bottom of the sea rolled up with a cloud of mud and sand, blurring the underwater camera footage, and nothing could be seen again.
And the fish and shrimp that are attached to this area, as well as the aquatic animals, all began to flee their homes in panic.
It took about ten minutes for the underwater environment to gradually return to clarity, and in front of the water column, it could be clearly seen that the tattered planks of the Royal Merchant were exposed to everyone.
The people on the ship couldn't help but let out a cheer, no one thought that their operation would be so smooth this time, just arrived in this sea area, and found their target so smoothly.
Only Zhou You took it for granted, as long as he was willing, there would be at least ten shipwrecks that could be salvaged by him one by one.
But he won't do it, because if he exposes his difference from ordinary people because of this, it will be more than worth the loss for him. Therefore, he would rather establish a shipwreck research institute as a foundation for his future salvage than expose the secret of his rebirth.
When the belly of the wreck of the Royal Merchant was exposed to the circumference, everyone deduced the specific location of the Royal Merchant from the position of the ship's belly, and at this time, the clean-up work was carried out in a more orderly manner.
When the morning sun shines through the thick clouds on the Ranger, which is the same color as the sea, underneath the Ranger, the Royal Merchant, which has been dormant for three hundred and sixty years, also shows its moving posture.
All the crew members were not sleepy, looking at the inconspicuous wooden ship through the screen, but their eyes were shining with a moving light.
It is this humble shipwreck, but it represents endless wealth.
Zhou You looked greedily at the wooden ship, and he clearly knew that in this inconspicuous ship, there was a wealth worth half a billion dollars.
"Chakr, divide all the personnel into two shifts, and then carry out non-stop salvage, and strive to get all the belongings out of the water in a month's time. Sanchez, you arrange for all the personnel to pack in the warehouse, each box is to be divided into a thousand silver coins, and the silver coins that are glued together are put into the sea tank first, and then cleaned up after the Ranger returns. Remember, everyone should wear sheepskin gloves and no direct touch of silver coins with their hands. ”
In the operation room, Liang Hao looked at the Royal Merchant on the screen, and felt that the adrenaline in his whole body was surging. As Zhou You's closest brother, he knows that Zhou You has been troubled by funds for a while now, although this ship is a little smaller than the Mercedes, but if it is full of antiques, it is worth a lot of money, and it will definitely relieve Zhou You's financial pressure.
Before leaving the Ranger, he also wanted to repay the tour with his own efforts......
In the warehouse, Fernandez listened to Sanchez's lecture while secretly observing the layout inside the Ranger.
In the past six months, his life has been turned upside down, he did not expect that he would change from a Madrid gangster to a seaman, maybe from now on, he will leave his original life and become a free seaman.
Yes, free.
But he's not sure where his future lies, and can he really be free? He wasn't sure at all.
But he knew that until then, he had to do his job, or he would have no freedom at all.
On the Ranger, he has always adhered to his duty, wanting to get out of his current state of life as soon as possible, but he suddenly finds that he seems to have discovered a big secret.
(To be continued.) )