On 8 March, a merchant ship from Denmark docked, the second ship to dock since the end of the war.

In addition to hundreds of tons of various supplies, the cabin of the Galen ship contained 179 immigrants from Holstein and Norway. Mr. Captain chose to buy 20 sets of three-year-old full-body armor and 100 sabers, which are famous in the Baltic region, so he only had to pay an additional 4,700 yuan for the goods.

These immigrants will be resettled in the 3rd and 4th production teams that are being newly built in the Dingyuanbao Reclamation Area.

And that's just the beginning.

On 25 March, another old friend of the crosser, Captain Svensson from Gothenburg, anchored in the harbor with two large ships. This time he brought with him a full 484 immigrants from Finland, Bohemia, and Livornia; more than 100 tons of copper, lead and pig iron; graphite, mercury, gunpowder, arquebus, firearms; More than 100 (head) livestock cubs, seeds, fruit tree seedlings and some daily necessities.

Captain Svensson had recently made a fortune, so he opted for barter. It's just that the three-year-old full-body armor he fancy is limited to production, and there are only 100 sets in stock at present, and Captain Svensson, who refuses to run empty, has put his idea on the three-year-old command knife and steel cannon, which are in demand in Europe today.

Far from it, let's talk about Sweden's restless neighbor - the rude and rude Russians. In recent years, the Russians have been working hard to carry out their own military modernization, not only forming several new infantry and cavalry regiments modeled after Western Europe, but also hiring a large number of foreign officers with rich war experience to train and command the Russian army.

When we are bringing in advanced military personnel and systems, the introduction of advanced military weapons is of course also indispensable. However, due to Russia's own backward military manufacturing industry and the lack of high-quality iron ore, Russia began to purchase weapons from foreign countries in large quantities. Just last year, Russia purchased 19,000 muskets and 5,000 sabers from Western European countries.

Moreover, the ambitious Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich was always obsessed with recovering Smolensk, which was occupied by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and for this reason, he did not hesitate to expand his armaments. In this way, Russia has become a major gold mine for arms exports, in addition to the belligerents of the 30-year war, and the Swedish businessmen who are close to Russia are naturally the first to get the first thing.

Of course, as a qualified businessman, Captain Svensson felt the slightest guilt for selling advanced weaponry to Russia, Sweden's traditional sworn enemy, and all he cared about was profit.

Russia has always had a great thirst for high-quality sabers, whether it is infantry or cavalry, and the total shortage of sabers is estimated to be more than 15,000 at this stage. The 102-centimeter-long 32-year-style command knife is forged from hydraulic machinery using high-quality steel. The straight blade is slightly curved, sharp and tough, and has both practicality and artistic appreciation value, which is not at all a level compared to the sabers made in Western European countries. The arsenal set a sales guide price of 2.5 yuan per 32-year-old command knife, and Captain Svensson ordered 800 of them at once, almost sweeping away the inventory of the traversal.

In addition, due to the use of high-quality steel casting and the unique self-tightening technique of the barrel, the barrel can withstand high chamber pressure. Therefore, the artillery casting workshop of the arsenal made the body tube diameter larger when casting, and the effect was that the gun had a longer range and more power, and the life span was much longer than that of ordinary artillery, generally more than 5,000 rounds. In addition, the weight of the whole cannon is only half of that of the cast iron cannon of the same caliber, and it is much lighter than the copper cannon. In addition to the fact that the heat dissipation is not as fast as the copper cannon, it is simply a perfect epoch-making artillery.

There are doubts about whether to sell large-caliber artillery, but there are no problems with light guns for the army under 12 pounds. At present, there are 22 4-pounder guns, 10 6-pounder guns, and 18 8-pounder guns in stock in the arsenal cannon casting workshop, which can be sold directly to the Swedes. Among them, the sales guide price of the 4-pounder gun is 10 yuan per gun, the 6-pounder gun is 18 yuan per gun, and the 8-pounder gun is 35 yuan per gun.

Captain Svensson didn't bargain either, and ate it all. The total price of 100 sets of full-body armor, 800 sabers, and 50 light guns of various types was 9,030 yuan, and after deducting the payment, Crossing the crowd paid an additional 5,850 yuan to Captain Svensson.

By the end of March, the company had completed three arms businesses, selling a total of 220 sets of three-year-old full-body armor, 1,150 three-year-old command knives and 50 large and small artillery, with a total sales of 17,105 yuan, and more than 60% of them could be said to be profits.

The arms business is really profitable! Recognizing this, no matter how stupid the Executive Committee is at this time, it knows what to do.

The Thirty Years' War was raging, Russia was sharpening its knives against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Netherlands and Portugal were fighting to the death on the Amazon River......

In the eyes of the Executive Committee, these wars are treasures, and with the high-quality weapons at hand of the Executive Committee, even if they cannot monopolize the market, they can still get a big piece of the pie. This is not strictly self-evident for the traverser base area that is in ruins.

Don't look at the executive committee, there are still nearly 180,000 yuan in cash on hand, but if you don't know that firewood and rice are expensive, the expenses of the executive committee are not small. Let's talk about the army, the current scale of 236 people, the monthly salary of personnel is more than 300 yuan.

And that's not even counting training, the cost of training is even more staggering. According to the calculation of five rounds of live-ammunition training three times a week per person, a soldier will consume about 500 grams of gunpowder, 160 grams of arquebus and 40 kilograms of lead bullet a week, and these materials are worth about 2~3 jiao according to the import CIF price, and 236 people will consume about 60 yuan. This is still a time of peace, and if it is a time of war, it will consume a lot. This is not counting the naval coastal defense artillery, the 32 cannons are even more of a gold-swallowing monster, spending more than 100 yuan per week for training.

After such a conversion, plus some miscellaneous expenses, the monthly maintenance expenses of the navy and army in peacetime alone will be 1,250 yuan ~ 1,300 yuan, which is staggering. In addition, taking into account the salaries and subsidies paid to some freemen, the Executive Committee conservatively estimated that the monthly financial expenditure was more than 1,600 yuan. Given the level of the Executive Committee's thirst for all kinds of production and living materials, and the increasing frequency of transactions and immigration, this fund really can't last long. Although there are more than 600 sets of porcelain in the warehouse, which are worth a lot of money, these are all brought from the old time and space, and they are non-renewable resources. Selling porcelain to eat is no different from sitting and eating empty.

One can therefore imagine how anxious the Executive Committee is to open up new sources of revenue. The arms business is a long-term way, and with the iron and steel smelting technology that has been mastered by the public for one or two hundred years ahead of this era, coupled with the advanced cannon barrel manufacturing technology, it has been possible to rely on the resources of the time and space for production and grab high profits.

It has to be scaled up! This was the unanimous opinion of the Executive Board.

Therefore, the Executive Committee organized personnel to start an in-depth investigation of several workshops of the arsenal.

The first is the cannon casting workshop. Today, after several replenishment of manpower, the casting workshop has more than 30 craftsmen at all levels, more than 40 skilled apprentices, and more than 60 new apprentices. Due to the invention of the water-cooled method of casting cannon barrels, the speed and yield of cannon casting have been greatly improved. In fact, it can be said that the production capacity of the casting workshop has not been released at all, and the only bottleneck restricting their production capacity is the supply of molten steel.

The situation is similar in the armor and cold weapon manufacturing workshop (formerly the weapons workshop). Due to the use of a large number of hydraulic machinery and hydraulic forging hammers, the production efficiency is greatly improved. Nowadays, it is also suffering from the lack of steel supply, and the production capacity has not been able to be effectively released.

Investigations have been carried out, and the spearhead has been unanimously pointed at the steel mill.

In this regard, the person in charge of the steel plant and the industrial commissioner Ma Jia are also very helpless. Ma Jia said that at present, the steel mill uses graphite crucibles to make steel, and even if large crucibles are used, they can only smelt more than 1 ton and less than 2 tons of molten steel at a time, and these poor output is only enough to cast a 24-pound naval gun at a time.

"If you want to increase production, yes! Either build me more furnaces, more crucibles; Either the existing smelting furnace will be renovated, the open-hearth furnace project, and steelmaking! Ma Jia pouted: "This project is technically feasible, and I also know the details of the technique." I've been thinking about it for a long time, so why don't you consider my suggestion? ”

However, the executive committee still has concerns about the Shangopen-hearth project, and the biggest obstacle is the shortage of coal.

At this stage, all the raw materials used in cross-cutting steelmaking are brought from the old time and space, that is, more than 1,000 tons of scrap steel and 5,000 tons of thermal coal. At this stage, there is nothing to do in crucible steelmaking, although the consumption of steel and coal per ton is amazingly high, but the scale is also small, in general, because the coal consumption of steelmaking will definitely not exceed 200 tons so far. However, if you go to the open-hearth steelmaking project, the scale will go up, and the coal on hand will not be enough for long.

And now there are many places that use coal, such as wheel kilns, cement kilns, lime kilns, wood drying kilns, wood distillation kilns, etc. Especially now that immigration is accelerating, and there is a shortage of various construction materials, the Executive Committee is planning to build two new wheel kilns and a cement kiln to alleviate the tension of construction materials, which will increase the consumption of coal.

Nearly 1,000 tons of coal have been consumed in a year and a half, and the rate of consumption will definitely be faster in the future, and the remaining 4,000 tons of coal really can't be used for a long time.

Discussions went on and on, but in the end, a compromise proposal was reached, that is, to continue to build a new melting furnace with a capacity of 20 crucibles to expand steelmaking production, and the open-hearth steelmaking project was put on hold for the time being. At the same time, the issue of coal has also been taken seriously by the Executive Committee and has been raised to a strategic level.

PS: Xie Lu Xie Linenhai's reward.