Compared with the Yellow River that has been frozen, although the strait between Yuzhou Island and the mainland is frozen, there is no ice on the other side of the sea, only occasionally you can see some ice blocks washed by the waves near the port, and in the harbor, a ship is moored here, and the boat needs to be dragged ashore for maintenance in winter, to avoid ice, in this harbor, dozens of ships of different sizes are moored at the berth, most of these ships are all kinds of sea vessels, of course, there are several loyal and righteous sailors unique to the "galleys".

On the coast, several huge windmills swirled in the strong sea breeze, and wind-powered sawmills sawed logs into suitable boards, and not far off the coast, there were more than a dozen warships under construction, as well as mountains of timber and thousands of craftsmen who built ships in the cold wind.

"Wooden warships may seem simple to build, but in fact the preparation period for construction is relatively long, because of the nature of wood, if the felled wood is used on the ship without sufficient drying, such a ship will not be able to withstand the ......"

In the shipyard of Yuzhou Island, Shi Si looked at the envoy beside him, and his eyes were inevitably a little surprised, because the drying kiln in front of him completely subverted his understanding of wood drying.

"Of course, that's for sure, wood that doesn't dry enough to last on a ship."

Zhu Mingzhong is naturally very aware of this, thanks to his roommate's hobby of nautical models, he learned that in the Napoleonic Wars, French shipyards had built more than 100 battleships in a few years, but by 20 years later, even if they were not sunk or captured by the British, more than three-quarters of these battleships were rotten and unusable. In contrast, according to British standards, the timber is generally dried for more than a year before being installed on the ship, and the hull frame is covered for several months to continue to ventilate and dehumidify. When construction of the Victory began in 1759, her hull sat idle on the slipway for three years before construction resumed in 1763. And before the start of construction, the wood itself took more than 20 years to dry! The long drying period allowed the Victory's timber to remove moisture from the depths, so the wooden sail ship had a particularly long lifespan. Even into the 21st century, it was shown in the UK.

"But we don't have time to dry the wood slowly for years or even decades, so we build a wood drying kiln......

Pointing to the drying kiln in front of him, Zhu Mingzhong looked a little proud, maybe the British can use natural drying methods to let the wood dry slowly, but for him, the urgency of time makes him have to build as many warships as possible in the shortest possible time like Napoleon, but this does not mean that he should build warships with wood that is not completely dry like Napoleon.

"Maybe the quality of steam heating drying is inferior to natural drying, but at least we can avoid using wood that is not fully dried, after all, right now, we need as many warships as possible!"

This is a simple steam heating drying kiln, although it seems simple, but it can make those from Henan, Shandong and other places to purchase oak, elm in a short time to fully dry, so that it will not be soaked by seawater in a short period of time. Still, she can't compare to naturally air-dried wood.

"The most important thing is wood, warp!"

Again, Shi Si pointed to the warships under construction in the distance, compared to the small tonnage "Slupp ship" built in Qinghe before, the six warships built now are all 30-38 gun cruisers, of course, this kind of warship is not designed by Shi Si alone, Zhu Mingzhong himself also gave a lot of suggestions, after all, his roommate has made many 18th century cruisers, that is, models of three-masted fast warships, so when he asked Shi Si to design 20-40 gun warships, he also made some suggestions, thus bringing it closer to the three-masted fast warship decades later.

"Now, although we use elm instead of oak under the waterline, but even then we don't have enough wood for the construction of warships, we need more wood, as much oak as possible!"

Shi Si's request made Zhu Mingzhong say helplessly.

"Don't worry, it's all going to be ......"

But the question is when?

Now, Cui Muhua has returned to North Korea, but when will he be able to transport the oak wood to Yuzhou Island, this is the most critical, the reason why he chose Yuzhou Island, this big island as a base, not only because this later Lianyungang is still lonely on the sea, has not yet been connected to the mainland, but more importantly, here, you can use North Korean timber more conveniently, of course, in Jiangbei, this is also the only place suitable as an external seaport.

"Soon, we'll have enough wood!"

Well, even Zhu Mingzhong himself does not believe in this sentence, but hopes that by the time of spring, North Korean timber will be transported here.

"But don't worry, soon, there will be no more problems with artillery, now that the Liguo Iron Works has opened the furnace to smelt iron, once the raw material problem is solved, there will be sufficient artillery supply here, of course, well......"

After a moment of silence, Zhu Mingzhong said again.

"Wait until next year, after the timber is shipped, there should be a batch of high-quality iron ore shipped at the same time, compared with the iron ore in Liguo, the iron ore there is of better quality and more suitable for casting cannons!"

The iron ore in Zhu Mingzhong's mouth also comes from North Korea, located in the mouth of the Datong River less than a few miles from the sea, the Yinli iron ore has excellent quality of low-phosphorus, low-sulfur iron ore, in this era, there is no more suitable raw material than low-phosphorus iron for casting guns, the British Navy was able to dominate the sea, Sweden's low-phosphorus iron is one of the reasons.

In East Asia, in addition to Benxi, that is, Yinli iron ore has advantages of low phosphorus and low sulfur iron ore, its quality may not be as good as Benxi, but it is far better than other iron ores in China, and more importantly, as early as the 16th century, Yinli iron ore has a history of small-scale mining. It is precisely because of this that Zhu Mingzhong will let Cui Muhua use it as the ballast of the ship's hold to transport as much Yinli iron ore as possible.

"I hope so!"

Shi Si shrugged his shoulders helplessly, and then said.

"Jinglu, I believe you, there is always a way to solve these ......"

Suddenly, Shi Si stopped talking, and he looked at the sea, and the whole person looked at the sea with a surprised and surprised look, looking at the ship that appeared on the sea, and at the stern of the ship, there was a light blue red cross and white cross flag, that is...... That's the flag of the United Kingdom!

The ships on the sea made Shi Si muttered in surprise.

"This, how can this be ......"