After a long time, Xiong Jing realized that Shi Yan's so-called one mile and one dollar were the cost of a carriage to walk one mile. In fact, the freight rate of 0.23 yuan/jin per 100 kilometers of land transportation is not too high, even if it is an air return, it is only 0.46 yuan. The real difficulty lies in the fact that coal and iron ore often cost tens of thousands of tons, hundreds of thousands of tons, and in terms of 100,000 tons, 185,000 horse-drawn carriages with only 3 or 40 stones are needed, and 360,000 horses. Where to find so many horses? Moreover, these 185,000 carriages, even if they are 4 meters each, have a queue of 740 kilometers.

There is no coking coal in the whole south, and in case it really retreats to Jiangdong one day later. An annual production of 4,000 tons of pig iron requires 12,000 tons of coal, not including the coal consumption of refined mature iron and crucible steelmaking. 4,000 tonnes of pig iron a year is certainly not enough, and before the Industrial Revolution, Britain produced more than 20,000 tonnes of steel.

Not to mention 20,000 tons, 10,000 tons of steel consumes 40,000 or 50,000 tons of coal a year. These coals go through the Huaishui and Hangou for four to five hundred kilometers, and it is better to transport them directly from Chaohu Lake after 100 kilometers of railway transportation, and finally enter the Yangtze River. The most important thing is that Hangou is to divert the water of the Yangtze River to the north, and it is retrograde to transport coal from Huainan into Jiangdong.

The railway, at least Yingdu to the Chaohu Lake in Luxian County, this 100 kilometers will definitely be built. As for the cost, that's a blind eye. There is no concept of how wide and high the track bed of the horse-drawn railway is, and there is no concept of how many bridges and culverts need to be built in this hundred miles; There is also the rail itself, the price of the huge iron is not expensive, but how much is the rolled huge rail, it is also a very unremarkable thing.

Xiong Jing, who thought of the rolling mill, began to repeat silent thoughts in his heart. I already have gears, bronze roller bearings, and high-hardness tools quenched from high-carbon steel, and it is not difficult to build a rolling mill. The rolling mill appeared in medieval Europe in the sixteenth century, and the lead was rolled into thin sheets as roofs, and in the seventeenth century, the iron was tied into slitting sheets, which could produce tinplate, but the rolling of the rails seems to be very late, and it seems that at first the rails were only wrought rails no more than one meter long.

Half-heartedly, when Xiong Jing introduced the advantages of Jiangdong Iron Works and the solutions to some problems, the painting boat had already arrived at the shipyard wharf. Gong Yijian has been here for a long time, he first took everyone to the ship model room to see the sea boat, after reading it, these Wei merchants will be sent back to Yingdu, Xiong Jing stayed to inspect the production of the three paddle warships.

"This is the sea boat?" In the huge ship model room, some ship models that should not be seen by Wei Shang have been removed, and only a two-meter Galen ship is left in the middle of the ship model room, which was done by the shipyard under the guidance of Xiong Jing, in order to familiarize himself with the new shipbuilding concept.

Although it is still in the shape of 'cloth for clothing, copper armor for clothing', the sails have been replaced with the original color of linen, and the copper armor remains unchanged, but the upper end of the copper is covered with a layer of black pine tar, which makes the whole ship black and not slippery. But the boat is very exquisite, completely reduced in a ratio of twenty to one, compared with the current boat, giving everyone an unclear shock.

"Can this boat ride against the wind?" Bai Yi turned around the furnace and looked at it carefully before asking. "What if it's a headwind?"

"On the sea, you can only resist the wind, and you can sail against the wind." Xiong Jing smiled, not explaining if he went against the wind. "This ship can carry 1.6 million Chu Jin per ship, equipped with more than 70 sailors, although it can only go back and forth once a year, the freight rate is still low."

"Dare to ask the king, Xizhou is far away, how can I get there?" Bai Yi sensed something and no longer asked about sailing against the wind.

"When the State of Chu compiled the Book of Mountains and Seas, it found an ancient map, which can be reached by following the map." Xiong Jing replied.

"Mountains and Seas?" The compilation of the mountain and sea charts of the state of Chu will go to various countries to search for information, and he may have heard of it, and after he finished speaking, he said: "Dare to ask the king, can you take a look?" ”

"The map is hidden in Yingdu, and you can see it when you go back." Xiong Jing Road. Although the world map is not accurate and many places are drawn wrongly, it is still a resource. Now the map shown to the public is only the Eurasian continent, and the area around Malacca in the South Seas is deliberately wrong.

"Dare to ask the king, how much does this kind of sea boat cost?" Shi Shu asked, he is a big transport businessman, and in addition to the carriage, there is also a boat at home.

"The price of wages is half a gold per ton." Xiong Jing replied. "In terms of tonnage, one ton is four thousand catties."

"Half gold?" After Shi Shu made a silent calculation, he said: "This boat is enough for two hundred gold?" ”

A Qinghan boat costs more than 30 gold, but the Qinghan boat is very small and can only hold a few tons; A ship costs 50 gold, which can hold 70,000 catties, but the cargo of a sea boat can be loaded with more than 20 ships, and more than 20 ships are already more than 1,000 gold.

"Two hundred gold is just the price of wages, not the price of wood." Xiong Jing explained. "A 400-ton ship needs 400 large chapters, each of which costs thousands of dollars depending on the distance and distance...... In general, a sea boat costs one and a half to two gold per ton. ”

Considering that he would have to sell ships to make money in the future, Xiong Jing estimated the price to be higher. In fact, at this time, the south is full of thousand-year-old nanmu forests and thousand-year-old camphor forests; The deep mountains in the north are not densely populated, and most of them are elms that are 500 or 1,000 years old, as long as the water transportation can be reached, the price of a large chapter is not too high, especially in the case of the popularization of iron tools.

"Eight hundred gold!" Shi Jian gasped, a sea boat cost 800 gold.

"Although the price of the ship is high, the trade can be repaid three or five times." 800 gold is indeed too expensive, and 300,000 gold bonds are only 375 sea ships. Xiong Jing was worried about scaring everyone, and said, "If you want to be cheap, you can build it with iron." In this way, each ton can be less than one gold, and the ship is also strong and durable, and can withstand storms and waves. ”

"Can you build a ship with a lot of iron?" The common-sense problem arises again, iron is not considered to be able to be shipped.

"The pillars and beams can be made of huge iron, the same strength, and the huge iron is lighter than the big chapter." Xiong Jing was silent after answering. He waited for everyone to look at it for a while, and then asked Changjiang to send them out of the shipyard and back to Yingdu.

Gong Yijian just heard Xiong Jing say about the huge iron shipbuilding, and after everyone left, he asked: "King, can the giant iron really build ships?" ”

"Naturally. The keel of the sea ship must be a thousand-year-old nanmu, but the thousand-year-old nanmu is not as good as a huge iron keel. Xiong Jing said as he entered the dock area with him. It is not difficult to roll iron before it is completed, and it is not difficult to roll iron. ”

"However, the sea ship is thirty or forty long, and this huge iron can be cast thirty or forty zhang long?" Gong Yijian still couldn't believe it.

"It's the same as a wooden boat, just splic." After answering the question, Xiong Jing asked, "How is the construction?" ”

There were more than 20 battleships under construction, and there were not enough docks, so the shipyard erected a slipway - considering that this was not a Mediterranean battleship, but a river battleship, the length of the triplex battleship was not thirty-seven meters, but only twenty-seven meters, and the number of paddlers was reduced to one hundred and twenty-four. A battleship of such a length can use some spare wood from before, and there is no way to have a keel, and the ships in the whole world have no keel, so there is no preparation, so they can only be spliced.

"I was about to ask the king to take a look." Gong Yijian took Xiong Jing to a dock, and the warship in the dock was basically formed. Because the shape is still a three-slurry style, the width is not 3.6 meters, but expanded to 5 meters, and the side of the ship has also been heightened, and the front part of the keel is a huge iron column for impact, and the front part of the keel is not pointed cone-shaped but square, in order to destroy the bottom of the enemy warship to the greatest extent and form a large breach.