......A short whistle sounded, and the Qingtang Jun No. 2 dredger slowly sailed into the dock of the Hyundai Special Shipyard, ready to undergo routine maintenance.

The yard now has five slipways, one semi-finished boat under construction on each of slipways 1 to 4, and a dedicated maintenance slipway for regular maintenance of ships that have reached the end of their working hours, or emergency repairs for damaged vessels.

Qingtangjun No. 2 is the second dredger produced by the plant and is currently dredging the Lianghu Canal. The Two Lakes Canal is the only waterway that connects the Yihe-Milin Lake system in the south and the Yazi Lake basin in the north. However, the flow of the waterway, including the two lakes that connect it, is relatively gentle, and sediment tends to accumulate sediment, so regular dredging is necessary.

At present, the dredging of the river is nearing completion, and the water depth of the central channel has reached more than four meters, which is enough to pass any ship in the country. Once this key channel connecting the two lakes is dredged, the next step is to clear a channel in the northern Duck Lake that can be navigated by large transport ships. Due to the special tectonic relationship, the western half of Duck Lake is a shallow water area, with many animals and plants such as reeds and crocodiles, and can only be navigated by inland steamboats or small gunboats; The water depth in the eastern half has been basically measured in the past few years, and the water depth in most places is more than 5 meters, but there are still a large number of intermittent shallow water areas, many of which are even only two meters deep, which makes it easy for large ships to run aground when sailing, so it needs to be deepened.

Fortunately, the bottom of the lake is full of silt and pebbles, which can be accomplished with dredgers produced by modern factories. However, considering that there are only two dredgers in the country today, one of them (Qingtangjun No. 1) is still dredging the extremely important Yi River waterway. Only Qingtang Army No. 2 can be mobilized. This has to be dredged until the Year of the Monkey to make Duck Lake navigable for big ships.

Nor is it without comforting news. Today is already September, and in more than two months, the third dredger, Qingtang Jun No. 3, will be completed. At that time, there will be two dredgers that will be able to work at the same time, one south and one north, and the work of dredging the channel will be greatly accelerated. And when it comes to dredgers, we have to say that today's modern factories have heavy shipbuilding tasks.

Of the plant's five slipways, the other four slipways are used to produce all kinds of boats throughout the year, except for No. 5, which is dedicated to maintenance. After each batch of ships is completed, the competition for these slipways will become fierce in the following units (mainly all ship-using units). Given the extreme importance of Far Eastern migration today. Two of the slipways have been fixed for the construction of the 1,200-ton "Sprint Champion" class migrant vessel. The other two slipways have to accept the task of steaming some ships, and also build special ships such as whaling ships and dredgers, and now they are proposing to build large tugboats and barges, which simply make all the employees of the modern factory busy to the horizon.

"Ships are in high demand, and skilled sailors are in greater demand." Wei Hua, the director of the Hyundai Special Shipyard, stood in front of his office on the second floor of the factory, looked at the busy slipway outside, and said: "The United Front Work Department recruits pirates in the Caribbean every year, but the number is not as good as every year. This year there are even only a few dozen, which is too few! I think the Spaniards over there would be very grateful to us. It was we who managed to reduce the number of 5,000 pirates gathered at the peak of Tortuga to just over 2,000 in ten years, and the number of vicious pirates of all kinds attacking transport ships was reduced by 30%. Hehe, let's kidnap us, and the pirates don't want to stay on the island for the rest of their lives! ”

At present, the only institution in the country to train sailors, the seafarers' training college in Luoqia Port, has been opened twice, and it can provide about 200 trainee sailors for each unit every year. This may seem like a lot, but it is almost half the gap compared to the nearly 400 sailors needed to launch 18-20 ships a year. Even with the addition of dozens of pirates from the United Front and a small number of Malay sailors who were qualified after a long period of investigation, the gap was still as high as 100. As a last resort, the Ministry of Communications had to place skilled sailors on important ships as much as possible, while delegating authority to the captains of unimportant merchant ships to recruit trainee sailors themselves.

Therefore, it can be said that at present, the 17 flute-type transport ships (belonging to the South China Sea Transport Company) sailing in the Atlantic Ocean and the 4 flute-type transport ships (belonging to the East African Transport Company) sailing in the Indian Ocean are filled with a large number of unqualified young sailors. In June this year, a flute-type ship of the South China Sea Transport Company accidentally sank off the coast of Dongfang Port due to improper operation by sailors, which caused the ship to accidentally hit the reef.

Immediately after this tragedy, the Ministry of Communications squeezed out some funds, and at the same time made a fuss with the United Industrial Credit Bank, asking them to allocate some loans, and then use the money to order a small training ship at the Dayuhe Naval Shipyard. They plan to next double the enrollment of the Rocha Seafarer Training College to provide 400 regular trainee sailors per year. At present, the school has only one training ship of the 250-ton "East Coast Eagle" transferred to them by the navy, and after the enrollment scale is expanded, it is naturally not enough, and a new one is urgently needed.

"The sailor's problem can be solved in a moment." Xiao Bailang, who was sitting in his office smoking a pipe, said, "Now that experienced sailors have been arranged to run routes to Australia and the Far East, they have even set up their homes in Xinhuaxia and Heishui, and the rest of the country is naturally some crooked melons and cracked dates." Don't worry, the problem has to be slow, the number of sailors cannot be increased in a while, there must be a process. ”

"I'm in a hurry." Wei Hua smiled, spit out a round smoke ring in his mouth, turned to Xiao Bailang and said, "I am only responsible for shipbuilding, as for where the sailors who drive the ship come from, it is none of my business?" It's the Ministry of Communications and the Executive Committee that should be in a hurry, what the hell am I doing! I only get a salary of more than 100 yuan a month, and I'm not tired of taking care of so many things! ”

"Hey, hey." Xiao Bailang smiled, "I heard that now that the state has relaxed the restrictions on the production of small steamboats on inland rivers, private capital has been allowed to gradually enter this industry." I think it's also because the market demand is too large, right? I see that your kind of 72-ton inland steamboat is built directly on the tidal flats, and when it is almost built, it is pulled to the slipway for the installation of the power system and the final outfitting procedure. That's what the technical content is. Ordinary people can make it. I see that the workers of your slipway No. 5 are also relatively idle on weekdays. How did you think about what you said last time? Interested? ”

The thing Xiao Bailang said was very simple, that is, to find a way to start his own shipyard. To this end, he has even investigated the topography and hydrological information in the vicinity of Hekou Township, and preliminarily selected a future site. What is lacking at the moment is personnel and funds, and the problem of funds is easy to solve, and the savings of himself and a few like-minded friends for many years, plus some loans from the United Industrial Credit Bank, are almost enough. But the technicians are more head-scratching. The illiteracy rate in the country is too high, and there are few skilled workers of all kinds, and they are concentrated in major state-owned enterprises. And the shipyard they want to build is an enterprise with certain technical content requirements, and it is not something that can be done by just pulling a few illiterate farmers, so they can only go to the major shipyards to dig the wall.

Xiao Bailang has a good personal relationship with Wei Hua, the director of Hyundai Factory, so he was the first person he found. Wei Hua himself is also more tempted by this, but it is a relatively sensitive matter to cross the public to start a factory by himself, and if he digs up the walls and feet from the factories where he is the factory director and damages the public and private interests, Wei Hua is really afraid that he will be put on the head with a gun by the crazy people in the military department. However, the idea of opening his own shipyard has been lingering in his mind, and he has been working for the country for several years. Although the salary is very high, the dividends of the East Coast company are also quite a few every year. It stands to reason that I shouldn't be short of money to spend, but it's not always a matter if I don't have a career of my own. It happened that Xiao Bailang came to find himself to partner in opening a factory, saying that the factory site and funds could be done, and the agent had been found (state cadres were not allowed to do business directly), so he needed experienced technical personnel, which made Wei Hua realize that this was indeed a good opportunity.

"At present, there are only more than 50 domestic 35-ton old steamships and 72-ton new steamboats, and the demand is at least 100. And with the gradual retirement of 35-ton boats, the demand will be even greater in the next few years. According to our current ex-factory price, a car is 1200 yuan, and the profit margin is at least 20%. Seeing that the market is so hot, even if it is a little more expensive, it will definitely be in short supply, and the market prospect is really excellent. Wei Hua took a hard puff on his cigarette, and then said, "But wait a little longer, and we'll talk about it after this year." Slipway 5 has also been very busy this year, having just completed two shallow-water inland river support gunboats of the 'Amur' class just a few months ago, and has just gone with the last batch of ships to the Far East. In the second half of the year, we will continue to build a few ships, which are in a hurry, and we have to do maintenance for other ships, so I am not so idle. I think you are still stepping up the recruitment of technicians in Europe, hasn't the government been recruiting, you can join forces, the Ministry of Communications picks the rest and you pull it back, what are you afraid of building some civilian ships? ”

The shallow-water gunboat of the "Amur" class was designed and finalized by the Hyundai Plant, which is about 55 meters long, 8.2 meters wide, with a draft of 0.8 meters and a standard displacement of 250 tons. The power system uses 2 Popeye-2 improved (70 horsepower) steam engines, 2 coal-fired boilers, and a speed of 9-10 knots, which is the fastest pure steam-powered vessel designed in China, thanks to her strong power (140 horsepower) and the design of the propulsion system with twin shafts and sculls.

The ship was armed with two 8-pounder howitzers in the bow and eight 4-pounder howitzers on both sides, and the firepower could only be described as so-so. Originally, the Navy was going to ask for a rotating ironclad turret similar to the structure of the Coles turret, but considering the ship's shallow draft and small tonnage, it abandoned this unrealistic novel design and replaced it with a traditional firepower arrangement. This kind of ship is extremely powerful in inland river close support operations, and it is fully steam-powered, with fast speed, shallow draft, flexible maneuverability, and strong seaworthiness, and is an ideal inland river accompanying support gunboat. The Hyundai plant produced a total of 2 ships in the first batch, namely "Amur" and "Liaohe", which have now gone to the East.

"Also, there's no rush at this time." When Xiao Bailang saw Wei Hua say this, he nodded, and began to think about how to recruit shipbuilding technicians in Europe. (To be continued......)