By the end of the three-day meeting, Summer City's plans for the year had been finalized, and limited resources were spent on a few activities that all the attendees supported. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 Before the end of the info, Jian Chen hopes that this time next year, they will be able to put forward their opinions as reasoned and evidenced as he thinks: what should be done? What not to do? How many people do you need to do it? How long does it take to complete? Are the ones that should be done in front? Which ones come later?

It may take many years to work perfectly, but it will take even longer to get started.

The officials under the Sixth Division received their tasks and slaves, and were confidently ready to do a great job, and everyone was very busy, and for the first time these people had the idea that it was not a good thing to be elected as an official, but they were motivated to think of the reward after the deed.

Chen Jian also has a lot to do, there is still some distance before July 15, the sports field and theater still need to be repaired, the evaluation of military merits, the distribution of slaves, the planning of the outer city of Xinxia, the survival and welfare of the weak under private ownership, the population statistics under the new household register, the ceremony of entering the city for those who have newly become Chinese, and the additional expenses to appease the tribal leaders......

And so on, every day is busy until midnight. Even if the population of Xia City is not large, he is at a loss, but the few people who can help him share all have their own affairs, and they are too busy to get out.

The children in the school are still being educated by him, and it will be at least three years before they can share these things.

Yu Qian'er divided more than 2,000 slaves, and was busy with what he had to do with Hongyu, and there were only 600 slaves left in Chen Jian's hands, and these 600 people did not need to cultivate the land for the time being, and they were mobilized by him.

The six hundred slaves were not newly captured, most of them were veterans who had been slaves for a year and a half, both men and women.

The six hundred slaves were not idle when he was evaluating his military merits and formulating some laws every night, and Chen Jian sent them to dig a large pit by the grass river, which was located in the middle of the summer canal diversion canal and the artificial lake.

A larger dock was built near the big pit, but the original dock was too small, and the water near it was too shallow to pass only the bark boats of Summer City.

The newly built wharf was chosen in a place where the water flow downstream of Luodao was soothed, and a road was built to lead to Xia City, and the large pit dug by the slaves was also near the wharf, which was of course used for shipbuilding.

In this era, water transportation was the most convenient and cheap mode of transportation, and the grass river had a gentle flow after flowing through Luodao, and there were no reefs, which was suitable for boating.

It takes a lot of manpower to build a road, and even if the road is built, it is 300 miles from Echeng to Xiacheng, and it takes six days for ox carts to pull thousands of catties of grain. In these six days, people eating, cattle gnawing, wheel wear, and so on add up, and it will cost seventy or eighty catties of grain, nearly one-tenth of the loss.

This is still the closest city to Xia City, and if it is farther away, the loss will reach one-fifth or even one-third, which is unbearable.

It is foreseeable that with the dissolution of the clan, the newly built houses and the harvest of the first year of private ownership, the handicraft industry in Xia Cheng will develop rapidly to meet the needs of these people, but these needs will fall back next year after the peak, and if you don't want the handicraft industry that has suddenly developed to collapse, you must take advantage of the opportunity to exchange and trade with the outside world.

If you want to trade, you must have a suitable means of transportation, and the solution that Chen Jian thought of was a simple sailboat.

Everything has to start from scratch, but if you successfully build a sailboat and accumulate experience, Xia Cheng's range of activities and trading will be able to go all the way down the Grass River in the future.

Moreover, the two planned colonial towns were also close to the riverbank, and when it was difficult to build roads, it was best to develop along the river.

After the slaves dug a large pit for docking, Chen Jian seconded all the carpenters in Xia Cheng from Yu Qian'er, and at the same time, Yu Qian'er, who was the master of goods, was also required to exchange a large amount of wood paint from Echeng within a month, and Hongyu and the women also received orders: linen cloth and hemp rope.

The rest of the materials were also arranged, and Chen Jian selected some of the best wood from last year's sun-dried wood, and the carpenters began to cut the planks with bronze saws and planers.

Since it was an experimental nature, the first sailing ship did not need to be built too much, mainly to train manpower, and Chen Jian was also sure that the first ship might not run.

From the canoe to the side of the sunken boat, the clansmen in the previous life did not take too long. If it is said that the boat was built as a beam in the Book of Poetry Daya proves that there were boats at the end of the Shang Dynasty, then some records in the oracle bone inscriptions in Yinxu prove that non-canoe plank boats had appeared in the early Shang Dynasty: the slave riot in the Shang capital, the Shang king's divination learned that these slaves could be caught one day, but the slaves resolutely crossed the water to escape, and the Shang king called a boat to cross the river to arrest him, but it was still a few days later than the time of divination, and this matter was recorded as a major event.

At that time, there were certainly no nails, and the fixed planks were nothing more than tenons and natural waterproof glue, which proves that the hull does not need to withstand huge wind and waves, and now the conditions can make a passable ship.

The first boat did not need to be too big, so Chen Jian chose a pine wood about 12 meters long as the keel of the sailing ship, and let the slaves transport it to the pit dug, and in the future, after the boat was built, the river embankment was dug up, and the boat could float when there was water in the pit.

Since it is an inland river boat, the square-bottomed sand boat of the previous life is an excellent template, and I don't know how to build it, but the principle can guess this kind of flat-bottomed boat because the wide bottom can be well adapted to inland river transportation.

After cutting the pine wood into rectangular strips, two thinner ones were selected as the side keels and side by side as the bottom of the boat, with a hull width of about four meters.

After calculating the number of planks and ribs and decks needed, the six hundred slaves were divided into twenty groups, each of which was cut with simple tools, and the subsequent mortise and tenon were done by the carpenters of the city.

The twelve-step keel is divided into five sections, each of which is reinforced with ribs, cocked to the sides, glued with mortise and natural glue and then air-dried, and the five sections that will be divided into five sections in the future will be used as a water trap, which can also hold more cargo.

After the support structure of the hull was completed, the wooden planks cut by the slaves were laid and fixed, and some of the crevices were smeared with a mixture of wood lacquer, lime and arrowroot.

The planks swell when exposed to moisture, squeezing these fillers together to make them waterproof.

After the outer planks are laid, they are coated with pine resin and wood paint, and two long wooden strips are selected as the longitudinal beams of the deck, which is two meters higher than the bottom of the ship.

There is a one-meter-sized wooden rudder at the stern that uses a winch to control the angle, the role of the wooden rudder is to disturb the current and provide a weak lateral force, but because the boat is relatively long, it is equivalent to a lever, so the weak steering force uses the natural lever of the hull to allow the boat to steer.

The mast is slightly forward of the hull, and there are plenty of beams fixed in the cabin below deck, enough to resist the force of the sails.

Chen Jian did not use a Western soft sail, but a hard sail with the characteristics of Chinese in his previous life, using horizontal logs to connect the sails together, similar to an accordion.

Hard sails are convenient, only one pulley is needed to raise and lower, there is no need for sailors who climb around on masts in Age of Discovery movies, and perhaps ocean voyages are not dominant, but they can be used in inland rivers.

The most important thing is that it is easy to operate, it takes not many people to lift the sail, and it is easier to train.

This simple sailing ship was not built in too long, and there were many shortcomings, such as unbalanced left and right, poor water tightness, unsmooth and heavy gangways, no streamlined hull, etc., Chen Jian estimated that the service life was only one or two years. But at least the experience you can accumulate and identify the shortcomings so that you can improve next time is invaluable.

The whole ship was thirteen paces long, four steps wide, the deck was two and a half steps above the bottom of the ship, and the huge painted linen cloth was connected by wooden strips, and the carrying capacity was not large, but in the eyes of the people of Xia Cheng it was already a behemoth, at least it was more qualified to be called a ship than those bark ships.

The simple ship was expensive to build, costing six hundred slaves, more than half a month of carpentry for the entire city, and a break of voluntary labor for the whole city; Not counting the food and shelter of the slaves and the people of the city, the wood was not cut down at that time, even if there was no cost, but it still consumed about 200 copper shells in exchange for wood lacquer, linen, etc., which can be said to be the most expensive product in Xia Cheng so far.

The two-meter-tall hull was like a toy in the eyes of Chen Jian, who was accustomed to seeing giant ships, but in the eyes of the people of Xiacheng, it was a creation that needed to be amazed.

The day of completion happened to be the tenth day of the seventh month, and it was the tenth day of the month, and there were a lot of people near the dock, and even some people from Xiacheng who were far away in the mall and Heyin also came here to watch, and were amazed by this "behemoth".

Chen Jian listened to the buzzing voices around him, silently praying that the maiden voyage of the ship would not sink, smelling the smell of pine resin and wood paint on the ship, Chen Jian gritted his teeth and waved his hand into the distance.

A few clay cannons were lit, the tribesmen learned to cover their ears, and after the smoke of gunfire, all the carpenters involved in the construction took up shovels and blocked the passage to the summer canal in the puddle and dug the embankment of the grass river.

The river rushed into the pit, and Chen Jian and a few people stood on the boat, their hearts pounding, and opened the warehouse to check the water seepage of the hull.

The dry lime and ballast stones in the cabin gradually became wet, but the water did not pour in too much, and after a while of soaking, the gaps were gradually squeezed in.

Chen Jian secretly breathed a sigh of relief, as the tide rose, the boat gradually rose, and the final waterline was two feet up from the bottom of the boat, it seemed that the workmanship was still too heavy, and there was still a lot of room for improvement.

When the water gradually stabilized, Jian Chen waved his hand, and more than 100 slaves pulled the rope and dragged the boat out of the dock little by little, and drove into the grass river.

The grass river is very stable, the boat flows down the river, in the widest place, Chen Jian turns the winch to drive the wooden rudder, the people on both sides of the force together, the boat is on the water, the east wind blowing from the distant sea blows the water surface wrinkled.

"Raise the sails!"

Two people pulled the rope under the pulley and hung up the hard sail with wooden sticks across it, and Chen Jian and a few people adjusted the angle, so there was a cheer from the riverbank.

A flock of geese and geese floated on the water, chasing the blades of grass that floated on the water and were also eastward, which was a natural thing, because the people of Xiacheng knew the truth of going down the water.

Such a natural thing does not provoke cheers, but the reason for the cheers is that the wooden boat, which is so different from the drifting geese and geese and the blades of grass, actually goes against the current, slowly moving forward. The speed is slow, yet the water goes east, and it goes west. (To be continued.) )