Hearing Li Yuanba's question, Chang Baisheng hesitated for a long time, but still said: "According to the current level of shipbuilding in Dengzhou, I'm afraid there are still some difficulties!" ”

"Oh? What's the difficulty? Li Yuanba turned his head to look at Chang Baisheng and asked.

"Whew!" Chang Baisheng lowered his head and thought for a long time, and said: "To put it simply, there are three main points: the first point is manpower. Although the most advanced assembly line technology implemented by our shipyard now means that each person is responsible for part of their own parts manufacturing, if they are not familiar with the parts manufacturing and the parts manufacturing has been processed, it is not easy for them to get started. ”

Li Yuanba remembered that in his previous life, if some factories were short of manpower, they would generally recruit apprentices first, and wait for the apprentices to adapt to a few months before letting them get on the machine alone.

Wanting to come here to recruit new workers to learn and adapt is the same as the worker procedure of manufacturing parts on the assembly line.

However, this problem is easy to solve, and it is enough to train the recruited shipwrights intensively, but it will take more time.

Thinking of this, Li Yuanba nodded and said, "What is the second point?" ”

"The second point is the accessories. The rest is okay, the main thing is the serious shortage of the 'steam engine'. For such a long time, the Artifact Bureau has been researching steam engines day and night, and only three have been built, two of which are used here, and one has been scrapped because the innermost gears do not match! ”

When he said this, Chang Baisheng seemed to realize that he had leaked his mouth, and hurriedly turned his head to look at Li Yuanba, and after seeing that Li Yuanba had no expression, he exhaled lightly and continued:

"As for the third point, it's the fuel problem!"

"What's so hard about that?" I don't know when I ran to Li Yuanba's side, Li Su interjected: "The entire iron ore and carboniferous mines in the Tang Dynasty are at the mercy of my Fourth Emperor Uncle, is it possible that you are deliberately deducting fuel?" ”

Li Su's words suddenly made Chang Baisheng's face bitter:

"His Royal Highness is wrong to blame the lower officials, not that Xiaguan deliberately withheld the fuel allocated by the imperial court. In fact, the fuel allocated by the imperial court cannot be used immediately, but needs to be reprocessed, and this procedure alone will waste a lot of manpower and material resources. In addition, although we have been working hard to improve the coke combustion process, we have not had much success. ”

Chang Baisheng sighed and said with some sadness: "So, this has become the three major difficulties that limit our shipyard from wanting to manufacture steam ships in large quantities!" ”

"Alas, it's the king who is a little anxious!" Li Yuanba shook his head, even though he knew that he couldn't eat hot tofu in a hurry. But he was still a little anxious.

"Uncle Sihuang, what do you think? Our Datang country is strong, what else in this world can threaten our Datang? In the future, our Datang will inevitably be even stronger! Li Su's eyes were filled with excitement,

Thinking with his toes, Li Yuanba knew that this kid was thinking about fighting again.

"Can you kid think of anything else in his mind besides fighting?" Li Yuanba patted Li Su's little head angrily and said, "Let's go, let's go in, it's windy outside!" ”

Still looking to the future. Li Su, who longed for himself to lead the army to gallop on the battlefield, quickly retracted his consciousness after hearing Li Yuanba's words, and followed closely behind Li Yuanba and said:

"yes. It's a little cold out there! Master Chang, you should also go into the cabin, anyway, the glass is quite clear, and you can see the outside from the inside! ”

The equipment used to make glass that Li Yuanba brought from Chang'an City was not for nothing. At present, the windows of the Dengzhou Governor's Mansion have been replaced with glass. Moreover, this glass window has been completely settled in Dengzhou, and only a very small number of ordinary people's homes have not yet been completed.

"Yes!"

Chang Baisheng is a shipwright, but he is not as different as Li Yuanba. state of physical fitness. couldn't help this kind of high-speed sea breeze, so after hearing Li Su's words, Chang Baisheng hurriedly got into the cabin.

……

Because the steamship was equipped with sufficient coal mines, Li Yuanba simply started an ocean voyage this time.

Of course, although it was a temporary idea, Li Yuanba did not forget to tell his subordinates to report back to Dengzhou, so as not to cause any chaos in Dengzhou.

In this way, the steamer sailed on the sea, and as for the purpose, it had no purpose, just went with the flow.

"Lord Wang, Lord Wang! Three miles away from our ship, a ship appeared and signaled to us that it was no-sailing! ”

When Shen Shi was approaching, a shipwright who was in charge of reconnaissance and lookout hurried to the cabin lounge and reported to Li Yuanbayu.

"Sailing, are you sure it's a sailboat?" Li Yuanba raised his eyelids and glanced at the shipwright who came to report and asked.

After upgrading or manufacturing ships over this period of time, Dengzhou already has three fleets of 30 medium-sized sailing boats, each of which is equipped with a telescope-based observation tower and at least five Shenwu cannons.

These three fleets will be divided into a fleet every ten days to carry out cruises, the main targets of those who have not enforced the sea ban, as well as the countries that steal and sell, and evade the taxes of the Tang Dynasty.

When the time of ten days is up, the next fleet will naturally cruise, and so on, and every day there will be ships patrolling the waters around Datang.

"If you go back to the prince, you can't be wrong!" The boatman nodded very firmly, and said, "Almost all sailing ships have to go through the inspection of our shipyard, and after passing the inspection, they can go to sea, so the small ones will not admit their mistakes!" ”

"Wave the flag to them and take the initiative to approach them!" Li Yuanba nodded and commanded.

The sailboat must be from the sea patrol, and since it is his own family, Li Yuanba has no need to be nervous.

……

After about a cup of tea, the sailboat three miles away finally approached.

In the control room of the sailboat, in addition to the crew at the helm, there are two generals of the Tang Navy wearing the dark blue general uniform designed by Li Yuanba.

"Brother Ze, what is this? Why does it look like a big lump of iron? One of the lieutenant generals of the navy looked at the iron boat in front of him with a frown, his eyes full of surprise.

"Xiao Jiu, I remember that some time ago, we escorted three cargo ships from the offshore into the Dengzhou Shipyard, didn't we?" Huang Zongze is the deputy captain of the first squad of the three maritime patrol teams, and this sailboat happens to be in charge of Huang Zongze.

The deputy general of the water army named Xiao Jiu frowned and said, "There is such a thing!" Also, I remember that the chief overseer who accompanied the ship, Mr. Chang, said that it seemed to be fine iron or something......"

When he said this, Xiao Jiu seemed to react, and looked at the iron boat a few feet away from their sailboat in disbelief, and said, "Is it possible, is it possible that all those fine iron are made of this thing?" (To be continued.) )