When the thirteen mothers returned to the capital, they knew that Yang Yi had already led the army to the battle, and it was useless to worry, so they could only wait patiently for news from the northwest.

At this time, Lin Ruhai of Hangzhou with nearly 12 wealthy businessmen has quietly entered Beijing, and negotiated with Han Bier behind closed doors in Sanshenglou, established the Jiangnan Chamber of Commerce, formulated a series of industry rules, and mutual aid terms, and after these discussions were properly discussed, Lin Ruhai was the representative to discuss the purchase of ships from the imperial court shipyard with Langzhong Wade of the Ministry of Industry.

The Great Song Dynasty has always attached great importance to shipbuilding, and the shipbuilding industry has been unprecedentedly developed, and shipbuilding has been set up in Kaifeng since the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China. He is responsible for building and repairing ships, and teaches water warfare. Every emperor usually went to Jinmingchi every year to watch the water battles.

The government has many official shipyards along the main rivers, and there are large shipyards in Hangzhou, Mingzhou, Quanzhou and other places.

However, the Great Song Dynasty had strict quota control over the manufacture of official ships, and by the end of the Dao Dynasty, the quota of official ships was 3,237, and since the first year of Zhiping (1064), the quota of official ships has been 2,854.

The imperial court issued an edict on the official ship yard, and it was not allowed to increase or decrease it on its own.

Therefore, it is very difficult for private individuals to buy large ships from official ship yards, and generally they can only buy them from private ship yards.

However, the technology of private boat yards is limited, and it is difficult to build such large ships with more than 1,000 materials. And all this will no longer be a problem after Yang Yi dredges up, and the official shipyard of the imperial court will accept private orders in the future and charge construction fees according to the materials.

The newly established Jiangnan Chamber of Commerce placed an order for 26 large ships of 1,500 materials to the official ship yard of the imperial court at one time, and this alone brought millions of yuan of income to the imperial court.

Han Bier was not ambiguous at all, she ordered three ships at one time, and before the ship was built, she had first sent a steward named He Honghai to Jiangnan to recruit shipwrights, and at the same time used the relationship between Lin Ruhai and others to build a commercial chain of purchase and shipment with Hangzhou as the center.

Thirteen Niang is not idle, she is also busy with things related to ships, of course, she is not busy building sea ships, but refitting a small boat; As soon as this modified boat appeared on the Bianhe River, it immediately attracted countless onlookers of good deeds.

Because the appearance of this ship is so strange, a "big wheel" is installed on each side of the ship, like two waterwheels, but there is no bamboo tube on the big wheel to absorb water, only horizontal water blades.

When the boat was going against the current, the "big wheels" were washed by the current, and they began to rotate non-stop, and the shore was full of people watching the excitement, all of them stretched their necks, and they all guessed what the purpose of installing these two "big wheels" on the side of the ship was for.

Thirteen Niang and Ming'er dressed up as scholars, both changed into Confucian shirts, and wore soft-footed hats on their heads, like two beautiful young men, they sat on another boat, directing back and forth.

The converted ship was so small that it looked top-heavy when two "big wheels" were mounted on both sides, and it staggered as if it were thirsty and drunk when it sailed on the river, and it was terrifying to watch; From time to time, the onlookers on the shore let out a burst of exclamation and ridicule, and it was no wonder that they, whoever saw the "drunk" appearance of this strange ship, laughed.

Thirteen Niang was extremely calm, anyway, this ship was used for testing, and she kept issuing various commands:

"Lean a little closer, come closer."

"Guys, row the boat faster, hurry up!"

“……”

She carefully observed the wake of the modified boat, as the boatman rowed hard, after the speed of the modified boat accelerated, the stern finally saw two turbid currents surging up to the water, Thirteen Niang happily took Ming'er's hand and said: "Ming'er, look, look, it's done, there is turbid water surging up." ”

Ming'er also said excitedly: "Lady, the maid has seen it, the lady is too profitable!" It's really become! ”

The two of them were happy, and the top-heavy converted ship in front of them suddenly tilted, and there was a "sigh, sigh, sigh!" on the shore. In the sound, he rolled on his side on the Bianhe River. Several boatmen became hot chickens, scrambling to swim to the shore, and in addition to the roaring laughter on the shore, there were also bamboo poles and ropes thrown to save people, and there was a mess for a while.

After several boatmen climbed ashore, the onlookers on the shore asked curiously, "What are you doing here, brother?" This is a waterwheel, not a waterwheel, with such two big wheels on both sides of the boat, it does not necessarily mean that your boat can go faster, I said brother, what are you doing here? ”

"Yes, yes, let's talk about it, hahaha......"

A few boatmen were the members of the Yang family, and they replied proudly with their heads held high, "What do you know? This is my mother...... The dredging boats transformed by officials are used to dredge the sediment of the Yellow River; As you must know, there is a large amount of sediment in the water of the Yellow River, which will be deposited when the water flow is gentle, and the more the sediment sinks, the higher the riverbed becomes, and as soon as the riverbed becomes higher, it is easy to burst the embankment; Hehe, with this kind of river boat transformed by my family's big officials, I am not afraid of sediment deposition, didn't you see it just now, as soon as this river boat walks, turbid water will gush up behind it, do you understand why? ”

"Why?" The onlookers asked.

"Go, go, this is a secret of the court, I can't tell you." In fact, several family members didn't understand the principle, so they had to put out the banner of court secrets.

"Come on, what kind of court secret is this, if it is really a secret, you will still test the ship here, who are you fooling?"

"Yes, yes, let's talk about it!"

The onlookers clamored again, and several of the family members blushed and had thick necks, but they couldn't answer.

In fact, the boat fiddled with by Thirteen Niang is to install a waterwheel on both sides of the ship, when the boat is going in the opposite direction, the water flow pushes the waterwheel to rotate, and there is a small gear on the shaft of the waterwheel, which drives another pinion installed on the water pump, and finally transmits the rotating power to the water blades in the water pump; To put it bluntly, this is the principle of a big gear driving a small pinion, and the huge waterwheel drives the small water blades in the water pump.

The entire pump sinks half a foot underwater, where the inlet is located, and the outlet is led under the riverbed by a pipe.

The working principle is that the boat is going in the opposite direction, the speed of the boat and the speed of the water flow are equal to the speed of the water wheel, and when the speed of the water wheel is transmitted to the water blade of the water pump, the speed of the water blade is accelerated many times, which can pump water; The water is not pumped upwards, but rushed to the riverbed through the pipe, and the smooth water rush washes up the sediment deposited in the riverbed, and then takes it away by the river water, which achieves the effect of dredging the sediment.

In the past, Wang Anshi dredged the Yellow River, and also tried to use mechanical operations, his method was to make an iron rake, tie ropes on both sides of the iron rake, and then tie it to the boat, and then sink the iron rake to the bottom of the river; Let the boat go down the river and pull the iron rake, which will scrape and float the sediment deposited under the riverbed, so that the river water can carry away the sediment to achieve the purpose of dredging the river.

At that time, Wang Anshi set up a dredging department of the Yellow River, preparing to allocate 300 boats to dredge the riverbed in places where the Yellow River sediment is easy to deposit.

But this method also has its drawbacks: as soon as the iron rake sinks to the bottom of the river, and after scraping the mud and sand, it is like a ship anchoring, making it difficult for the ship to walk; Especially if there are stones at the bottom of the river, once the iron rake gets stuck on the stone, it will be stuck, and sometimes even the iron rake cannot be picked up, so you can only cut the rope and give up the iron rake at the bottom of the river.

As a result, some rivermen were lazy and turned the teeth of the iron rake upside down, which saved effort, but also lost the effect of dredging the riverbed.

The iron rake sank under the water, and no one could see it, and unless the imperial court sent someone to supervise each boat, it would be difficult to put an end to the river work leave.

The dredging method invented by Thirteen Niang to spray sand with water is easier to prevent river workers from being lazy, because the gear of the pump is fixed with the gear of the waterwheel, and in the place where the water flow is relatively fast on the Yellow River, even if the boat is just parked on the river surface and the water wheel is pushed by the flow speed of the river, the effect of washing the sand with water can also be achieved.

The water pump she made does not need too high sealing because it is completely immersed in the underwater operation, as long as the water blade is stirred, it can absorb water and flush the sand, and the effect is very good; In this way, the river workers are also labor-saving, and it is easy to supervise, and it is entirely possible for a person to supervise hundreds of boats, because your boat is not good, you can see it at a glance from a distance, and your boat line is equivalent to normal operation, unlike Wang Anshi's iron rake, the river worker turns the rake teeth upside down, and you can't see it.

Now the thirteen mothers test is a small boat, after the side of the boat is loaded with two large waterwheels, it looks top-heavy, and it capsizes all of a sudden, but if it is used by the imperial court, it can be used with a larger boat, so that the phenomenon of capsizing can be avoided; The greater the correlation between the water wheel and the water blades in the pump, the faster the speed of the water blades, the stronger the water flow will be, and the better the effect of sand flushing.

A few family members did not understand the working principle of the water pump, so they could not answer the questions of the onlookers, Ming'er smiled at a large group of onlookers on the shore on the boat: "You are idle, you are idle, help us salvage this river boat, and I will tell you what is going on." ”

"Scared, don't talk about pulling it down, use this to let people help salvage this broken ship, no way." There was a burst of boos from the shore.

Someone even said: "Look at the strange appearance of this ship, and refuse to tell anyone under the pretense of being a court secret, maybe it is doing some bad deeds." ”

Several members of the Yang family felt uncomfortable when they heard this, and stepped forward to shout around the person who said this: "How can you speak? How is this a bad thing? Do you know who my senior official is? I'm afraid I'll scare you to death if I say I'll show up! ”

"Who?"

"I'm not afraid to tell you, my family's senior official is Bachelor Yang of the Dynasty, and now he is leading the army to attack Hexi, maybe now the good news is almost to Wanshengmen." When a few of them said this, they raised their heads proudly.

As soon as the people watching the excitement on the shore heard that it was the Yang family of Jingmingfang, they immediately stood in awe, and while there were many discussions, some people jumped into the river after a while, and others found ropes and prepared to help drag the boat ashore; Seeing the name of Yang Yi, the people went down to the river to help, and even Ming'er on the boat couldn't help but raise her pretty face, like a proud swan.

As soon as she was proud, Thirteen Niang raised her hand and patted her on the back of the head: "You damn girl, look at your stinky virtue, don't go back and get some money quickly, it's not good for people to help in vain." ”

"Yes, lady! Hee-hee......"

(To be continued)