After listening to Tao Donglai's words, Ning Qi quickly calmed down from the initial excitement. No matter how good this place is, it is also under the control of others, and if the crossing group wants to occupy it, it must first have enough strength itself. Even if Cam Ranh Bay can be brought over in the name of joint development in a similar way of cooperation with North Vietnam, it will have to invest enough resources in the preliminary construction of it.

The Tushan Peninsula, which is half-coaxed and half-occupied by the crossing group in the Beibu Gulf, is not large, the terrain is easy to defend and difficult to attack, and the nearby labor and materials can be supplemented, so the difficulty of construction and development is not particularly great. At present, a military station, a material warehouse, and a simple wharf have been built in the locality, and nearly 100 military personnel and almost the same number of civilians have been stationed, and the first phase of the construction of the military training business jointly established with the Trung clan of North Vietnam has been completed, and the first batch of 300 trainees has begun to receive training from Hai Han military advisers 10 days ago.

However, for the development of a place like Cam Ranh Bay, it is difficult to completely copy the experience of the Tushan Peninsula, because the area of this place is too large, and the inner harbor alone has dozens of square kilometers of sea surface, and to ensure the safety of this place, it is not something that can be achieved by stationing a small number of military personnel like the Tushan Peninsula. Moreover, the local harbor formed by two peninsulas is actually very similar to Shengli Harbor, and only by erecting powerful shore defense artillery at the narrowest part of the harbor can the harbor be truly foolproof. At present, the coastal defense artillery fortifications in the base camp are still in the construction stage, the coastal defense artillery has just been finalized, and the number of artillery is insufficient, no matter from which point of view, it is unlikely that large-scale coastal defense artillery fortifications will be built in overseas bases in the short term.

There are no special minerals in the area, and it is also impossible to build it as an industrial base like the Black Earth Port. According to the information of later generations, the only mineral raw material with mining value in Cam Ranh Bay is silica sand ore, which can be used in a large number of glass, ceramic production and metallurgical industry, but the problem is that Wenchang and Danzhou in Hainan have silica sand production areas and the reserves are not small, and there is no need to go far and far through the group.

"Cam Ranh Bay can be listed as one of the strategic points to be paid attention to in the future, but there is no need to rush to occupy it in the near future, even if Champong gives us that place, we will not be able to take enough resources to develop it now. Tao Donglai made up his mind about Cam Ranh Bay: "We can first establish a trade relationship with Champa and then try to convince the other party to set up a trading terminal in Cam Ranh Bay for the transit of goods, and slowly expand the scale." ”

"Sell them arms?" Ning Qi blurted out.

"I want to sell, but I have nothing to sell recently!" Tao Donglai showed a very sad expression: "The production capacity of the military industry department is not enough! At present, both Fujian and North Vietnam still have unfinished orders, and the expansion of the militia also needs to increase weapons, and the production rate of munitions cannot keep up with the consumption rate, and there is no stock in the warehouse that can be sold to Champa." ”

"Can't you let the military industry speed up production?" Ning Qi was very puzzled by this kind of behavior of not doing business.

"It's already been three shifts, the problem is that we don't have skilled workers at hand, almost all the workers are in the production workshop before they begin to receive production training, do you think that the craft of making guns and cannons can be practiced in just a few months? Every time you talk about speeding up production, the scrap rate will rise sharply, you haven't been to Tian Du's military factory room to see, the scrapped parts are piled up like a hill, and the current output can be achieved, and the people in the military industry department have worked very hard. Standing on the dual position of the Military Police Department and the Industrial Party, Tao Donglai had to defend the military industry.

"Recruit more workers...... Ning Qi only said this halfway before he felt that it was inappropriate, and he stopped.

The military industry department is not as good as other units, and it is not a naturalized citizen who is physically fit and obedient to be able to do the job, but this is a real technical department, and people with a rough mind will definitely not be able to enter, and this article has already wiped out a considerable part of the laborers. Moreover, because it involves military technology, there are also certain requirements for the "political background" of the workers, and only naturalized citizens who are born poor and have a positive view and gratitude for the crossing group can be qualified to become workers in the military industrial sector. In addition, these people have signed employment agreements for at least ten years, during which they cannot leave the areas controlled by the Crossing Group for any private reasons, which is also to ensure that the technological advantages of the Crossing Group in military technology will not be leaked.

With the constraints of various conditions, it is not so easy to select workers in the military industry department, and every time the list of naturalized civilian workers transferred from Ning Qi's hands is finally examined by guò to become a full-time skilled worker in the military industry department, not even one-tenth of them. From a certain point of view, the strictness of the selection process of the military industry department is even much greater than that of the military police department. This situation is reflected in the expansion of munitions production capacity, and the effect is even more minimal, and if we want to expand production capacity, we can only hope for the gradual increase of the group of industrial workers.

"I'll talk to this Zhan Gui again and see if he can be used for us. We can't sell arms now, but we can sell other things! Isn't it just to sell salt in all directions when we opened such a large salt factory?" Tao Donglai didn't seem to be very concerned about not being able to sell arms for the time being, because the crossing group still had salt in his hands, which was a stepping stone for a hundred tests.

Although the salt orders received by the group have exceeded the monthly supply of 200,000 catties, the executive committee is no longer worried that this output cannot be completed. With the completion of the renovation of the Shengli Port Salt Farm and the development of the Tielu Port Salt Farm, the salt output is expected to achieve a step-by-step leap in the next two to three months, from the previous monthly output of 10 to 120,000 catties to more than 400,000 catties. In his project report to the Executive Committee, Anxi optimistically said that by the time the first anniversary of the first anniversary of the two salt farms in April next year is expected to exceed 10 tons per day, which is about 600,000 catties a month, which has exceeded the combined production capacity of Fujian and Guangdong provinces plus all Daming salt farms on Qiongzhou Island.

The wholesale price of private salt sold by the group is extremely low, and the wholesale price obtained by first-class agents such as Luo Shengdong and "Fu Ruifeng" from Shengli Port is about 100 yuan per ton, which is almost one-sixth to one-eighth of the market price of Daming. This price seems to be very low, but from the very beginning, the executive committee has left a lot of profit margins for the agents under the idea of small profits but quick turnover, so that they can develop more sub-agents in their respective regions, and can use the lower selling price to grab the market share of official salt. And although the wholesale price is very low, the production cost is lower, and it is more than enough to maintain the operation of the salt works and feed the salt works workers.

The Executive Committee did not expect to make a lot of money from the smuggled salt business, because there were a variety of other high-value-added industrial products that could take on the task of making profits. The main purpose of running a private salt business is actually to expand trade routes, and to put it bluntly, it is to pave the way for the sales channels of industrial products in the future. As long as the dealers taste the sweetness from the initial private salt business, then their acceptance of Haihan industrial products will also increase a lot, which can save a lot of effort for Haihan products to build sales channels in the local area.

According to the information now grasped by the Executive Committee, in a "backward area" like Champong, salt production is even in the primitive stage of boiling salt, and its production efficiency and production cost are far from that of the Crossing Group. And the boss Zhan, who claims to be familiar with the situation in the city, seems to be the best agent candidate at present.

So three days later, when Zhan Gui left Shengli Port and went south, there were 5,000 catties of Haihan refined salt on board. Due to the lack of clarity about the shape of the city, the Executive Committee did not send a boat to accompany it, nor did it send a group of people to accompany it on Zhan Gui's boat, but only sent a few naturalized crew members to board the ship and ask them to confirm the voyage and the situation of the city first. Of course, Zhan Gui also got a promise from the Executive Committee that if Yi Qiē Shun lì could open the window of the private salt trade in the Champa City, then in the future, he could be the only designated agent of the Haihan Dynasty for the private salt trade of the Champa State, and monopolize this lucrative business.

In mid-November, the two Daguang ships ordered by He Xi at the shipyard in the capital city of Qiongzhou were finally delivered, and for this purpose, the Executive Committee also sent a special team composed of the Military Police Department, the Maritime Department, and dozens of naturalized crew members to the north to pick up the ships, and made a big circle in the west of Hainan Island, and recruited a group of laborers in Danzhou to transport them back to Shengli Port.

Just a few months ago, Danzhou was also conscripted to the mainland to participate in quelling the rebellion of Lu'an, and the coal mine labor was insufficient, which led to a sharp rise in coal prices across the island, and at the same time forced the crossing group to launch a black soil port colonization operation in advance in order to stabilize the coal supply of Dìng. But just a few months later, the trend of the war situation in the Lu'an Rebellion has been extremely favorable to the Ming Dynasty, and a large number of people began to return to their hometowns, while at this time the lignite in Danzhou has become a unsalable product, and almost the entire territory of Yazhou in the south uses "Haihan coal" with lower prices and higher calorific value.

Many coal kilns with insufficient capital have closed down after two or three consecutive months of sluggish market conditions, so the miners who originally belonged to the local small coal kilns began to lose their jobs on a large scale, and the local government has been strict about this, and there is no effective measure to guide employment. However, the executive committee that learned this information from Danzhou merchants would not miss this opportunity, and immediately increased the speed of introducing immigrants from Danzhou accordingly.

November 15, 1627, the eighth day of the tenth month of the seventh year of the Great Apocalypse, was a memorable day for the crossing group, and later Western historians even called this day "the beginning of the Eastern dragon becoming the overlord of the sea", because the first test ship built by the Ministry of Shipping took several months to build a combination of various advanced concepts, and finally went to sea on this day.

All the members of the executive committee in Shengli Port attended the launching ceremony, and several units stationed abroad also sent congratulatory messages on the radio, expressing their best wishes for the smooth launching ceremony. The shipyard has set up a colorful shed for this purpose, and many small red cloth flags have been planted, and paper colored flowers have been tied on the pointed bow of the test ship to create a festive atmosphere.

Tao Donglai and several other members of the executive committee shook hands with the responsible persons of various units involved in the development of the project one by one, expressing their thanks and congratulations to them, and Zhang Tiangui, the head of the naturalized civilian shipwright who had received this kind of "high-level treatment" for the first time, was so excited that he almost knelt down to the executive committee members directly. In fact, in the process of developing this ship, except for the Ministry of Agriculture and a few logistics units, almost all units and departments were directly or indirectly involved in the development and construction of this ship, so the attention aroused by this launching ceremony was also extremely high, no less than the grand occasion when the colonization fleet of Heitu Port set off.

In addition to attracting a large number of local people to the port, the Executive Committee also invited some spectators from the outside world to participate in the ceremony. For example, Li Nai, who is still staying in Shengli Port, Zhan Gui, who just returned to Shengli Port from Champa yesterday, Wei Inspector, who has recently been inspecting Yulin, who has been doing well, and Luo Shengdong, who specially led a fleet from Yazhou to congratulate him. And this time Luo Shengdong didn't come empty-handed, he sent thirty little girls very "intimately" to cross the group, and attached a deed of sale, which cost more than 1,000 taels of silver. Of course, no one in the executive committee dared to swallow this gift privately, so he quickly threw this hot potato to Ning Qi, and placed these little Lori, who were not even fourteen years old, in school first, and then found an opportunity to discuss how to deal with this "trouble" when they turned around.

Luo Shengdong is not a layman like Li Nai, out of professional sensitivity, after he got the permission of the executive committee, almost every time he came to Shengli Port, he would go to the shipyard to see the progress of the construction of the test ship, it can be said that this ship does not have too many secrets for him, at most some technical details are not understood, so the understanding of this ship is much deeper than Li Nai and others.

Luo Shengdong admired the Haihan people's shipbuilding skills and whimsical ideas in design, especially the shape of the bow, the steering wheel system and the design of the mast and sail rope, which made Luo Shengdong applaud. But at the same time, Luo Shengdong is also very clear that most of these advanced shipbuilding technologies cannot be copied in the Ming Dynasty, because those hull reinforcements, mechanical transmission devices and thick steel hollow masts made of stainless steel are not things that the craftsmen of the Ming Dynasty can imagine.

Luo Shengdong thinks that the only thing that Daming shipwrights can imitate is probably the kind of sail made by the Haihan people, but he has also heard from the people of the shipping department that there is not a large enough sail area, even if the traditional Chinese hard sail is changed to this kind of "Haihan sail", the actual effect on the ship is still very limited, and if you want to increase the sail area, the ultra-high hollow steel mast used by the Haihan people seems to be the only solution, so the only technical details that can be copied can only go into a dead end.

On the one hand, he wanted to see how much stronger the sailboat that the Haihan people had spent so much resources to build was stronger than the sailing ships of this dynasty, and on the other hand, the continuous growth of the Haihan people's maritime strength also made him feel a faint panic in his heart. Luo Shengdong is not one of those officials in the temple who can only speak empty words, he has been in the naval division for many years, and has a very intuitive understanding of the importance of sea control, and the ship built by the Haihan people is obviously not just for carrying goods and immigrants, and no civilian ship will be equipped with so many artillery, no, even the warships of the Daming Naval Division do not have such strong firepower!

After the Haihan people have mastered the control of the sea, will they still be as harmless to humans and animals as they are now, just burying their heads in making money and doing business? For this speculation, Luo Shengdong is not even the slightest sure, but if he wants to question the Haihan people face to face, he really can't afford to dare to do this, if the Haihan people really plan to turn their faces and do something, then the Yazhou sailor closest to Shengli Port is the first unlucky target!

"Anyway, in short, we must first look at the performance of the new ship of the Haihan people, and then we can decide whether the future attitude is war or ......" Luo Shengdong silently calculated in his heart, trying not to consider the worst possibility, he really couldn't imagine the scene of the Yazhou sailors, a pile of broken wood, dealing with the Haihan gunboats at sea, and could only hope that this day would never come.

And Li Nai's perspective on this matter is different from Luo Shengdong, although he doesn't quite understand what kind of technical advantages the Haihan people's ship has, but from the Haihan people's cautious attitude, the launch of this ship is of extraordinary significance to them. With the ability of the Haihan people to build, Li Nai has no doubt that in the next few years, the Shengli Port Shipyard will have a large amount of groundwater for such ships like dumplings. Moreover, the Haihan people can even build the kind of large iron ships dozens of zhang long, and it seems that it is a foreseeable trend to build bigger and bigger ships in the future.

Tao Donglai raised his hand to look at the time, and said to Yue Zhiyun: "Let's start!"

"Mr. Tao doesn't want to say anything?" asked Yue Zhiyun in surprise. Usually on this occasion, the leader will say a few words casually, summarize the past, look forward to the future, as long as everyone works hard, there will be candy to eat.

Tao Donglai smiled and said: "The meaning of this ship to our collective, those who understand it will naturally understand, and those who don't understand it don't need to explain more...... Is the launching ceremony with Chinese characteristics just a leader's speech? Let's still use facts to speak!"

Yue Zhiyun nodded vigorously, and then walked onto the slipway with Sun Changmi. As the leaders of the development and construction of the ship, they were entrusted by the Executive Committee with the important task of cutting the ribbon for it. The two drew their sabers from their waists, exchanged glances, and together swung their knives to cut the red silk hanging in front of the bow from one left to the other. The deafening sound of firecrackers immediately rang out, and several healthy oxen slowly walked forward under the impetus of the people, pulling the winch, and then the 32-meter-long wooden sailing ship was slowly pulled out of the slipway by several towing ropes connecting the winch, and slowly slid down the slides laid on the ground towards the sea.