How important is whaling? A whale has half or more meat on its body, and if you kill a 50-ton sperm whale, you can get 25 tons of whale meat. Even a smaller baleen whale weighs about 25 tons and can produce more than a dozen tons of whale meat.

What does this mean? It means that the meat produced by one whale can feed many people! If you take 25 tons of meat according to the weight of a sperm whale, it is 55,000 pounds of meat! Even if you eat two pounds of meat a day, it's enough for 27,500 people to eat a day. In fact, for the poor of this era, it is considered very good for each person to eat enough food for 1 pound a day, not to mention meat?

At the standard of 1 pound of meat per person per day, 55,000 pounds of meat can supply 55,000 people in a day. Just 365 sperm whales can be caught to feed 55,000 people for a year. Not to mention that whales also provide a lot of whale meat, and whale bones can also be used as fertilizer to fertilize the field.

Moreover, in this era, there were very few whaling people worldwide. Even if there are whale hunters, they are killed in small boats. Big whales, the indigenous whalers of this era did not dare to mess with at all. Because, the boat was gently pulled by a large whale and capsized.

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 were, most of them were small fishing boats operating in the offshore waters, and there were no ultra-efficient trawling nets for later fishing, only small hand-drawn nets, and the amount of fish caught was extremely limited.

This also led to the fact that the sea was extremely rich in fishery resources in this era, which also meant that the food source for whales was extremely rich. Therefore, there are many more whales in this era than in later generations. I don't dare to say anything else, but in those areas where small fish and shrimp are abundant, there must be a large number of whales waiting to eat nearby......

In places like the Newfoundland Fisheries, fishermen can see whales spewing water every day. Even in the North Sea, whales can often be seen spraying water. But even fishermen who know how to hunt whaling often don't dare to do it lightly. Because, their boat can't withstand the towing of large and medium-sized whales.

That's why Marin asked people to develop a whaling cannon. Not because the harpoon of the whaling cannon has a fast rate of fire and can hunt whales that swim fast, but because the whaling cannon is powerful and can penetrate deeply into the whale's body, and even hit the vital part of the whale, quickly incapacitating the whale, and there is no act of dragging the fishing boat.

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

In traditional whaling, the javelin-style whaling fork held by the fisherman pierces the whale's skin at most. Although it can get stuck in whale meat, it is not fatal all at once. In that case, the whale will run for its life because of the sharp pain in the skin. It's good to drag the whaling boat forward, but it's a big deal to follow for a while, so that the whale will lose all its strength, and at the same time, it will also give the whale time to die of excessive blood loss.

But the process is very dangerous, and being dragged forward by the whale is nothing, and if the whale suddenly dives to the bottom, it will be a lot of fun......

The whaling fork thrown by manpower pierces the whale's epidermis, just like hurting the human skin, and can only bring more painful extracutaneous injuries to the whale. After the whale suffers this kind of painful skin injury, it often runs away frantically because of the pain, which produces a high-speed drag on the whaling boat......

With the powerful whaling cannon, it's different. Because of its speed and power, the whaling fork can easily penetrate the whale's body and even penetrate the whale's internal organs under the drive of the whaling cannon. The whaling fork, driven by the explosive force of gunpowder, can also cause great damage to the target whale and make the whale ineffective in a very short period of time. As a result, the possibility of the whaling vessel being dragged by the whales and capsizing is greatly reduced.

Therefore, Marin felt that the importance of such a thing as a whaling cannon was too high. Once the research and development is successful, there will be endless whale meat in Beihai Country.

You must know that after World War II, due to the severe shortage of food and meat, Japan was forced to dispatch fishing boats to kill whales in order to obtain enough meat to make up for the dilemma of insufficient food at home.

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, and even the school cafeteria provided cheap and easily available whale meat. This has led to the fact that in the 21st century, many elderly people in Japan are very fond of whale meat, and even regard whale meat as a kind of faith. Young Japanese in the new century do not like to eat whale meat. Because they had not experienced the great food shortage in Japan at the end of World War II, they naturally did not feel much about eating whale meat.

At the end of World War II, Japan's population was more than 70 million, but most people relied on whale meat for nutrition. Therefore, it can be seen how large the scale of whaling in Japan was at that time. In the 60s of the 20th century, Japan had a total of 7 whaling fleets, with an average annual whaling capacity of 20,000 whales, which could obtain more than 100,000 or 200,000 tons of whale meat. At its peak, in 1962, Japan caught 300,000 tons of whaling in Antarctica, accounting for 78% of the world's whaling.

In other words, at that time, Japan obtained more than 100,000 tons of whale meat every year, so that the children who grew up in Japan after the war had enough whale meat. Therefore, those children became old people decades later, and they still remembered whale meat, which led to the introduction of the World Anti-Whaling Agreement in Japan, which continued to hunt whales in large quantities in the name of "scientific research" to meet the needs of those elderly Japanese who ate whale meat.

What is the concept of more than 100,000 tons of whale meat? One ton of whale meat is 2,200 pounds, enough for 2,200 people to eat for a day (one pound per person a day). 100,000 tons is equivalent to allowing 600,000 people to eat one pound of whale meat every day for a year. And if you want to get 100,000 tons of whale meat, you only need to kill tens of thousands of whales.

After World War II, Japan may also need to send ocean-going whaling ships to the waters near Antarctica. Because, whales in the Northern Hemisphere were hunted and killed too much as early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But in this era, the whaling industry in the northern hemisphere has not yet begun 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 whals are caught 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 the abundance of common fish harvested in Newfoundland's fishing grounds.

In the days that followed, the North Sea Kingdom would first capture hundreds of thousands of Taíno as serfs on the island of Haiti to help cultivate the land. But in the beginning, the arable land had not been developed, and the Beihai Kingdom could only rely on its own grain to feed the Taíno serfs.

And one person consumes hundreds of pounds of food every year, 100,000 people are tens of millions of pounds, and hundreds of thousands of people are hundreds of millions of pounds. And now that food is so expensive, all the grain is used to feed those Taíno serfs, and Marin can't afford it.

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

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

Previously, Europeans mainly relied on livestock oils, such as butter and sheep fat, to make soap, and the cost was high. Marin's previous use of javelin throws by hand to hunt whales can certainly catch whales, but the number of whales that can be killed is limited, and the 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 will be extremely staggering.

But so much whale oil, how to apply the problem, in addition to being used to make candles, seems to be used to make soap, it is also a very good use.

You must know that in the previous life, when looking at historical travel, making soap was one of the most powerful tricks to travel through ancient China, and almost every time-traveler would use it.

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

In the Ming Dynasty, animal fat was a treasure in the eyes of people, and it was an important way to obtain oil and water. Therefore, in ancient China, whether it was lard or mutton fat, it was very rare. And mutton fat is also an important raw material for lamp oil in ancient China. As for pork, it is a very important source of oil and water for the ancient Chinese and is extremely popular.

Therefore, in ancient China, if you want to make soap, the most difficult raw material to obtain is animal fat. If you want to mass-produce soap, you have to have a large source of animal fat. Therefore, the travelers who made soap had to cross paths with the steppe nomads in order to obtain sufficient animal fat. Otherwise, you won't be able to make soap normally and make a lot of money.

But Marin is different, he now occupies the Newfoundland fishing grounds, and he also has the ability to control large swathes of the North Sea fishing grounds. Once the whaling cannon was developed, there was an almost endless source of whale oil.

With whale oil, and then importing a large number of cheap mouth soda from Daming, it is possible to produce soap and even soap on a large scale. When the time comes, large-scale sales of soap to the Ming Dynasty can be called a very important source of wealth.

With such a huge market in the Ming Dynasty, Ma Lin can conclude that the sale of soap will definitely make him rich, counting the money and drawing 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 the Ming Dynasty, and may even produce a surplus.

After all, Daming doesn't have such a thing as soap, and Marlin can not only mass-produce soap with sufficient whale oil, but also set the price high, so that it can generate a lot of profits. In this way, Marin would not have to worry about the large influx of silver produced by his own family into Daming. Because, the soap made of whale oil will help him smooth out the trade deficit, which avoids the embarrassment of him buying from Daming with just the money......