After breakfast, Zhu Yuan came to the East Courtyard, and the first thing he did was to have a meeting.

Today there is one more Wu Zhen.

Three things.

The first thing is to ask Yao Feng to assign people to conduct a detailed inspection and evaluation of the large and small sea ships brought by Wu Zhen as soon as possible, and select the ships that can go to sea quickly with simple repairs in the near future. It just so happened that the shipyard was short of hemp, and the craftsmen and men could turn to repairing ships.

The second thing is about the distribution of 20,000 men to Wu Zhen.

Although people from all over the country have been gathering in Mingzhou before, it has never been enough, and this time 20,000 people will come, and more things can be done.

However, first of all, it is necessary to select the first batch of teams from all sides to transport grain to the north.

Roughly discussing the results, it is estimated that the first batch of 10,000 people needed to transport grain, Wu Zhen brought Tianxingwei 100 battles elite soldiers to suppress the formation, out of 3,000 people.

Two thousand of them were scattered on the grain boats, both to guard and to take charge of the boats. Tianxingwei was established in Jiangyin, on the bank of the Yangtze River, and a large part of it is also a naval army, so boating is not a problem. The remaining 1,000 men sail the ship to deal with possible accidents, such as emergency rescue or encounters with pirates.

Of the other 7,000 people, half of them were the fishermen recruited along the coast and half of the old Fang clan recently convened by Fang Li.

In addition, Zhu Yuan will also organize a group of technical personnel from the Yinghai Division and many maritime businessmen to be responsible for navigation, medical care, surveying and mapping, and other affairs.

After that, Zhu Yuan put out a map and discussed with everyone about increasing the scale of logging and timber storage.

This is also another major distribution direction that Wu Zhen brought in manpower.

Recently, Zhu Yuan has sent people to go up the Yongjiang River, from the mountains on both sides of the tributaries of the upper reaches of the Yongjiang River, or from the islands off the coast of Mingzhou, to harvest suitable timber, bundle it into wooden rafts and transport it to Dinghai.

However, this is not enough.

Zhu Yuan hoped to harvest shipbuilding timber on a larger scale from the rivers flowing from the rivers in various parts of the southeast coast into the mountains, and to establish official shipbuilding timber storage warehouses in Hangzhou, Dinghai, Taizhou, and Wenzhou, as well as Fuzhou and Quanzhou in the south.

This is not only for the immediate replacement, but also for the future.

Zhu Yuan even thought that in the future, things would be less urgent, and that manpower would be freed up and large-scale tree planting would be necessary at the same time as felling, forming a virtuous circle.

Because whether it is transporting grain by sea, or developing the navy, and even Zhu Yuan's other plans to open up the sea, it will be extremely expensive for ships.

That's right, it's 'consumption'.

Onlookers look at the sea, take the most common fishing as an example, and inevitably wonder, the sea is there, there are so many fish, fishermen drive boats into the sea, can't they catch big fish, why are most fishermen in this era even worse than farmers? And, why, is it that the oceans are so rich in resources that the dynasties and dynasties seem to be invisible?

The reason for this is that boats, fishing nets, and everything else are consumables that are not cheap.

Perhaps it is more appropriate to explain it with a term in Zhu Yuan's previous life in the online game.

Durable.

Boats, fishing nets, not only cost to manufacture, but also 'durable', wooden boats go down to the sea, are hit by the wind and waves, whether it is the surface of the tung oil and gray linen, or the wood of the boat itself, will be constantly eroded and consumed.

Not to mention the fishing nets, three days of fishing and two days of drying nets, it is said that the hemp fishing nets are very undurable in this era, and when you come back from a trip to fish, you must carefully clean and dry them, and even if you are careful to maintain, these fishing nets made of natural fibers will gradually be eroded and rotted by the sea water after a period of time.

Therefore, whether it is a boat or a fishing net, when the 'durability' is reduced to zero, the fishermen have to re-establish it.

Think about the "Camel Xiangzi", after a busy life, Xiangzi only wanted a rickshaw of his own, but in the end he couldn't ask for it. In the same way, the ancient fishermen wanted to buy a complete set of boat fishing gear, and it was definitely not as simple as imagined.

This is also why, Xue Shu of Dinghai Zhixian County told Zhu Yuan a few days ago that eighty percent of the fish caught by fishermen in Mingzhou a year came from a rhubarb fishing flood in April.

Because going to sea at other times, the fishing harvest may not be enough to make up for the 'durability' consumed by the fishing gear of your own boat, not to mention the danger of going to sea itself. Therefore, in many coastal areas during this era, fishermen only catch one season of fish a year during the flood season, and most of the other time, they can only rely on labor or agriculture to make a living.

Zhu Yuan had previously let the large sea boats he brought to go into the sea to try fishing, but Hua Gao opposed it, also because doing so would consume 'durability'.

One of the inconspicuous records of the Yuan Dynasty's recent collection of maritime information shows how much the Yuan court required local governments to organize the construction of a number of large seagoing ships every three years during the peak of shipping, which also shows how much the consumption of ships was caused by the transportation of grain by sea.

The wooden sailing ships of this era, which carried grain by sea with high intensity, made two round trips a year, and could only be used for an average of three years.

Zhu Yuan discussed it with Yao Feng.

Yao Feng said that if it is well maintained, it is not a problem for a sailboat to last more than five years.

This brings us back to another question.

In this era, it was easy to build a ship and difficult to repair a ship.

In particular, large seagoing ships must be dug out of a large dock near the port if they want to be repaired. The ship sailed in, closed the dock, propped up the big ship, emptied the water, and spent some time drying. The craftsmen then proceeded to inspect and replace the rotten wood, re-caulk it with grey linen, and apply it with water-repellent tung oil.

This series of operations is not much different from the time it takes to build a new ship. What's more, even after maintenance, it is still an old ship in the end, and the safety is not as high as that of a new ship.

Therefore, if there are enough raw materials such as wood, it is better to build a new ship directly.

The big ship was built, finished, and launched on the shore.

Three steps.

It's simple, it's crisp.

After all, it is true that wooden ships are not durable in this era, and it is also true that the cost is not high compared to transporting grain.

Zhu Yuan had obtained a specific data before.

During the Yanyou period of Yuanrenzong, that is, about 50 years ago, there were merchants in Mingzhou who specialized in shipbuilding to transport grain for the imperial court, thousands of sea ships, the cost of 90 ingots of treasure banknotes, equivalent to about 1,500 taels of silver, because the Yuan Dynasty gave the 'grain foot price' was very high, each stone was about 8 taels of treasure banknotes, and the thousands of sea ships transported grain 1,000 stones at a time, only one trip, everything went well, and you could earn back 160 ingots.

Not only did I get back to my capital in one trip, but I also earned money by removing other expenses such as manpower.

In fact, this also shows from another level that the cost of ships in this era was not high, only equivalent to less than half of the 'value' of that shipload of grain after it was transported to the north.

Therefore, ships of this era are consumables.

Among them, the wood that is most in demand for shipbuilding is abundant in the coastal forests alone. Compared to the speed of harvesting in feudal times, it can be said to be almost inexhaustible.

After the three things were discussed, they were assigned again, and most of the time had passed.

There will be a lesson later.

Zhu Yuan, Hua Gao, and Wu Zhen walked out of Mingyuan Hall while talking, and happened to see Zuo Qi walking towards a thin old man in his sixties, followed by three men of different ages who were somewhat similar in appearance to the old man.

Seeing this, Zhu Yuan immediately stepped forward with a smile: "Old Liu, have you made a decision?" ”

The old man is the Liu Laoqi that Zhu Yuan talked about in the first class yesterday.

For meteorological observations, there are many people in the world who make judgments based on experience, but similarly, there are also some people who predict the weather almost by some innate instinct, and the latter are often more accurate than the former.

Liu Laoqi is the latter.

This kind of treasure talent is rare, not only Zhu Yuan, but even Hua Gao showed a smile when he saw the old man, and followed forward.

After greeting everyone, Liu Lao Qicai turned to Zhu Yuan again, bowed down and said, "My lord, the old man and I...... If you can't make up your mind, you will bring all three sons and see them with the adults? ”

Zhu Yuan wanted to give Liu Laoqi an official position, and yesterday he asked Liu Lian to talk about it in person, and the result was that the old man wanted to grant this official position to his son.

Pity the hearts of parents all over the world.

Zhu Yuan thought about it a little and agreed.

Hearing Liu Laoqi say this, Zhu Yuan was about to turn to the three people behind him, who were obviously the three sons of the old man, but Zuo Qi glanced at him and gestured to look at the old man's face.