In the end, Frost and the others chartered a small cargo ship with a tonnage of 3,600 tons to transport the goods they purchased to India. The tonnage of 3,600 tons of pen &www.biquge.info amp; fun & pavilion can only be regarded as the smallest level in the Datang shipping company, in fact, the Datang cargo ship is divided into three classes, one is 3,000 tons to 4,000 tons of handy-size cargo ships, this kind of cargo ship draft is relatively shallow, can enter and exit the vast majority of ports, and carry out temporary berthing, and it is also a class of Datang inherited from the crossing of the public. The second gear is a cargo ship of about 5,000 tons to 8,000 tons, which is a relatively large cargo ship and is also the main force of bulk cargo transportation. The last gear is a cargo ship of more than 10,000 tons, Datang has a relatively limited number of ships in this file, purely for cargo transportation, only 12 are registered, the rest are passenger and cargo ships, the largest is naturally 100,000 tons of load Changmao ship.

But for the Britons like Frost, a steam cargo ship of more than 3,000 tons and a speed of 12 knots can already be said to be fantastic. They were able to get back to India early and didn't have to wait for the monsoons. Slightly more troublesomely, the cargo ship also needed to dock in Pontianak, Borneo, to replenish coal before it could reach India.

Although the cost of chartering ships and the cost of coal burned during transportation increased, the cargo carried also increased and the speed increased, which allowed the East India Company to actually make more money throughout the trade process. Even Frost wanted to persuade the East India Company executives to lease more steam cargo ships from the shipping company of the Great Tang Dynasty for trade.

Of course, he had a good idea, but if he rented a boat, the Tang people would not necessarily rent it to them. The capacity of Datang itself is also quite tight, and a considerable number of the cargo ships brought by the early crossing have been abandoned, especially those small tonnage ships. None of them are adapted to ocean voyages. Coupled with the huge transportation demand of the Tang Dynasty, tens of thousands of immigrants every month, a large number of goods from the west coast of North America to the Far East, or to the east coast and Europe, and then ships to and from different overseas territories and other foreign colonies, it can be said. Datang's capacity has become extremely tight after the implementation of the Dujuan plan.

Therefore, the orders of domestic shipyards are full, not to mention that the four major domestic shipping companies are not bad for money, and they do not blink an eye when ordering new ships, even those small private shipowners are waving banknotes in the hope of buying ships to run shipping. The two largest shipyards in Long Beach and the West Coast have no choice but to continue to expand their own docks, while other state-owned and private shipyards have emerged in the country.

Even the Shanghai Special Economic Zone is mentioning it in Bainan. Preparations are being made for the construction of a new shipyard for the manufacture of modern ships in the Far East. And the name of this shipyard built in Shanghai has unsurprisingly become "Jiangnan Shipyard". Jiangnan Shipyard is a state-owned enterprise, and one of the major advantages of Datang state-owned enterprises is that it has the ability to multiply and expand like cells. As the Long Beach shipyard grew, a large number of people who might not have been very knowledgeable about shipbuilding before were transformed into usable ship engineers. Moreover, they are all people in the system, and after the Ministry of Industry made an inquiry, a paper transfer order was transferred to the Shanghai Special Economic Zone. Actually, the same thing happens in a lot of places. For example, Datang Petroleum, after the development of the Jiazhou oilfield. A group of people were transferred to the Gulf of Mexico to continue oil development, and now another group of people have come to Norduvia.

This model is the so-called first will lead and then will, first strong and then strong, compared with pure private capital enterprises, it is difficult to do this. Because the monopoly and profit characteristics of capital will limit them from cultivating new competitors, and from the country's point of view, all resources can be mobilized in an orderly manner only by continuously meeting the development needs of the country.

Datang itself also has its own navigation school. A considerable number of them are learning to build ships, and although they enter the shipyard only at the level of basic apprentices, they are able to mature quickly, because the large number of orders gives them a lot of practical experience, so that they can change in practice.

As soon as the Jiangnan Shipyard was prepared, it directly went to a dry dock that can build large ships of 10,000 tons, and also has four medium-sized docks that can build 3,000 to 5,000 tons, and plans to build a total of ten outfitting docks. A shipyard of this scale is comparable to the two major shipyards in China, and the overall project will take a year to complete, and it is expected that it will be fully completed by the beginning of 1781.

The completed Jiangnan Shipyard will not only have the strength to manufacture medium and large cargo ships and passenger ships, but also have the strength to build warships. Not long ago, Jiaqing's new imperial military department submitted a request to Datang to purchase advanced naval warships. In principle, Datang will not prohibit the sale of new warships to the Qing naval division, and they will not pose any threat to the Datang Navy. However, it is obvious that the Qing court was very sorry for the large cruisers purchased by France and Spain for three or four million Tang yuan, and was only ready to buy some relatively basic ships at the beginning.

Previously, the Tang people converted many of the treasure ships in Zheng He's fleet and sold them to many Mexicans and Europeans. The same method can also be applied to the Qing Guo Mariner. The solution proposed by the Tang people was to use a treasure ship of more than 1,000 tons, equipped with a steam engine and propellers, so that it could reach a speed of 10-12 knots, retain the sails, and if necessary, the hull could be covered with iron armor. The weapon uses ordinary Datang foreign trade artillery, such as the 76 mm foreign trade version of the long-barreled naval gun.

The Tang people carried out modifications, plus weapons and armor, all the cost was definitely not more than 50,000 Tang Yuan, and the hull was ready-made, which did not cost the Tang people, and now they no longer need wooden sailing ships at all. In addition to the newly modified Zheng He's treasure ship, in fact, the Qi Jiguang-class frigates previously used by the Datang Navy have also been decommissioned and sealed because of the emergence of the Freedom Wind class. These ships will actually last at least a dozen years, and these ships are simplifying their firepower (the Tang people don't want the Qing Navy to be too powerful), and they are the same price as the newly converted ships.

For such an ironclad steam sail battleship, the Tang people would have to ask the Qing court for 400,000 Tang yuan. And Jiaqing also gritted his teeth and admitted it, he also learned the so-called development plan with the Tang people, Jiaqing planned to purchase 28 such ironclad steam sail warships within ten years, which were deployed in several naval divisions. This sky-high long-term order, together with other facilities and armaments, has a total scale of 13 million Tang Yuan, which can be seen from the windfall profits of the arms industry. At the same time, all the Ming Dynasty sailing ships inherited by the Tang Dynasty were all sold out, except for those reserved for commemoration and other purposes.

And Jiaqing also secretly rejoiced, if he had heard a revolutionary mentor who said, "The capitalist will sell even the rope that hangs himself", he would definitely agree with it. He believes that even if the combat capability of this kind of steam warship is not as good as that of the warships of the Datang Navy, it is not much worse. However, he didn't expect that the next speed threshold of the Datang Navy's combat ships was 20 knots, and the range of the foreign trade naval guns sold by the Tang people was not even half of the range of the secondary guns of the Datang Navy's warships.

However, speaking of the unit price of 400,000 ships, this price really can't be regarded as a loss, about 1,500 tons of ironclad steam sail battleships, in actual combat is definitely stronger than the British super battleships, and the British built a Victory, costing as much as 100,000 pounds, which is equivalent to more than 700,000 Tang Yuan, but it is nearly twice as expensive as an ironclad steam sail battleship.

In fact, this problem was also discovered by the French, they improved the existing sail warships, added new power, covered with armor, replaced with Tang artillery, and used better navigation equipment of the Tang people, and the amount spent generally did not exceed 100,000 Tang Yuan, and the warships after such modification were obviously not as good as the Glory class built by the Tang people, but against the sail warships of the British, they could kill the Quartet. As a result, Louis XVI spent a lot of money and asked the shipyards of Datang to refit a total of 30 sail battleships for them, with the aim of completely overwhelming the British Royal Navy.

The French are also relatively shrewd, and they used this large order to ask the Tang people to teach the French how to modify their own warships after the modification of these thirty sail warships, and to put it bluntly, they sent Datang engineers to France for guidance. For the Don themselves, this method of converting backward ships is simply not worth keeping secret. Datang now manufactures ships, basically using steel, and will not make and use wooden ships.

Wooden sailboats are not cut down from wood that can be used, the wood needs to be pre-treated, air-dried, and can take years or even ten years before it can actually become ship-building wood. Of course, the Tang people also have chemical methods that can speed up this process, but it is not necessary.

In addition, the Tang people's own shipbuilding technology has improved rapidly and the technical level is relatively high, and these modified ships have no competitiveness in the face of ships made by the Tang Dynasty. In addition, the shipbuilding tonnage of Datang Shipyard itself is not enough to meet its annual needs, and it is impossible to give up idle tonnage to foreigners, so Datang Shipyard basically does not ship ships for foreign shipowners.

Well, this technology of refitting and building old-fashioned wooden steamships, circulating out, can also make a fortune back.

What's more, even if the French learned Datang's shipbuilding methods, they need to modify a steam ship, first need to buy a marine steam engine produced by Datang, although the French and British have their own steam engines, but the horsepower is obviously not enough to propel a ship of thousands of tons. Then there is the transmission system, as well as other related mechanical parts. The French themselves do not have the capacity to do so, and even their own production of steel and other metal materials is very limited. The Tang exported mining equipment for steam to the Europeans, but did not sell them blast furnaces and open furnaces for steelmaking. The Tang people also plan to cover the steelmaking technology for a few more years, and then export it to the outside world after their national strength has been raised to a new level. But now the Europeans are already able to crucible steel, and the output is very small.

Coupled with the guns used on the warships, even if the French wanted to convert a steamship, they had to buy a lot of parts from the Tang, and the Tangs could still make money. (To be continued.) )