Chapter 203

In the process of developing the Maoshan Iron Ore Mine, it was unexpectedly discovered that the original grade of iron ore had reached 67% of the ore in most of the ore from the No. 013 open-pit mine according to the internal number.

In the future, it is not impossible to reach more than 67% of the world's iron ore, but only Australia and Brazil have it, and there are very few high-grade iron ores in China. However, Maoshan Iron Mine is magnetite, and the highest grade of rough can theoretically reach about 72%.

Xie Jinglin, who was in charge of the project, was ecstatic, and reported to Cheng Shizhuo as soon as possible, and even wanted to open a smelting plant in Maoshan to directly smelt iron ore into steel ingots and transport it to Liaodong.

Cheng Shijie expressed a different opinion: "Once the steel mill is opened in Maoshan, with this iron mine, there may be a conflict between Liaodong and North Korea, and there may even be a war. ”

"Ning Haijun has enough ability to keep the Maoshan Iron Mine!"

"No, once there is a conflict with the capital, or even a war, we will become the sinners of the Ming Dynasty!"

Cheng Shijie knows very well that with the strength of the current Ning Navy, he is definitely not afraid of North Korea or the capital, but the problem is that Emperor Chongzhen is now in control of the righteousness and has a strong influence on the immigration work in Liaodong. The most important thing is that in this way, Huang Taiji will wake up laughing when he dreams.

"So what do we do now?"

"Make a fortune with a muffled voice!"

Cheng Shijie said slowly: "The iron ore should be dug and dug up, and the excavated iron ore will be sent directly to Liaodong, and no one can leak this news. ”

Xie Jinglin is very sober, the quality of Maoshan iron ore is good, which will make many people in the world go crazy: "However, we have hired a lot of local North Koreans, even if we don't leak the news, they will leak the news!" ”

"That's an easy question!"

Shen Mingyu smiled and said, "In this world, only the dead can really keep secrets!" ”

Shen Mingyu didn't think there was anything wrong with this, in fact, Shen Mingyu saw Cheng Shijie's world map located in the General Soldier's Mansion, for the Ning Navy, Liaodong is still too small, and then the Ning Navy will start to expand, Liaodong, Nurgan Dusi, North Korea, and even the entire small day are the goals of the Ning Navy.

Of course, Cheng Shijie also has such thoughts, since he has come to this era of great exploration, if Ning Haijun's vision is only the Ming Dynasty, the two capitals and thirteen provinces, then he will be sorry for this era.

The expansion of the strength of the Ning Navy requires a solid foundation, and this foundation does not refer to the number of troops, but to the efficient and honest civil service.

It is easy to fight the country, but it is difficult to defend the country.

Cheng Shijie has no doubt that if he keeps expanding and takes Shenyang after the autumn harvest with the strength of the Ning Navy at this stage, there will be absolutely no problem.

But the problem is that the expansion of the territory needs someone to fill it in immediately, and only the real border of immigrants and good governance can this territory be regarded as truly owned.

With the current strength of the Ning Navy, it is not too easy to expand, and the Ning Navy not only crushed Jiannu with weapons and equipment, but also crushed the provinces and provinces of the Ming Dynasty.

For Liaodong's biggest task at this stage is to cultivate talents, if Cheng Shijie now has the world's great righteous name, can make most of the scholars use him, then he will definitely expand rapidly, directly lead troops to occupy Shenyang, Dangping Jiannu, and then lead troops south, occupy the Indochina Peninsula, Luzon and Malacca, turn the South China Sea into the Ming Dynasty's inland sea, and turn the South China Sea into the Ming Dynasty's South Sea.

At this point in time, the most critical issue in Liaodong is to develop education and cultivate enough talents, and according to the current way of Liaodong, at least several thousand outstanding local officials are needed to promote the industrialization of Liaodong.

But in fact, the talent gap in Liaodong is very large.

Secondly, that is about the development of the navy, for the time being, 2,000 gunboats is equivalent to Europa's fifth-class battleships, but the whole of Europe currently has at least more than 100 battleships of the second class and above, and at least five or six hundred third- and fourth-class warships.

The gap is huge, and it will take a certain amount of time for Liaodong to catch up. In all fairness, the current Dutch East India Company has enough strength to crush the Ning Navy sailors at sea, even if they dispatch one-fifth of their warships, the Ning Navy sailors are not capable of dealing with them.

Under Cheng Shijie's order, Maoshan Town adopted a development method of making a lot of money in a muffled manner, and North Korean workers followed the Shuangcheng Development Company to work, and the number of them increased.

Inevitably, news reached the North Korean side.

The king of Joseon, Yi Liang, heard the wind from the north: "I heard that the north side is very lively!" ”

"The king's will ......"

"Maoshan!"

Jin Zidian replied: "Your Majesty, your subordinates have also heard the rumors, it is said that the Ming Dynasty is building a Great Wall along Hamgyong Mountain!" ”

"The Great Wall!"

"That's right, all day long bombing mountains and quarrying, based on bluestone, built a Great Wall, this Great Wall will become a barrier to our northern North Korea!"

When Li Liang heard this, he no longer doubted: "After a while, send them grain and grass, the Ming Dynasty has paid a lot of manpower, material and financial resources in order to defend North Korea, we can't do without a little expression!" ”

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

As the city grew larger and larger, more and more roads were built, and the Koreans built small wooden houses along the side of the road to facilitate their work.

At first, the North Koreans were very happy with the food and food, but as the food they earned met their needs, they began to need daily necessities, such as cloth, silk or cotton cloth, of course, in this era, the price of cotton cloth was very expensive, a cotton cotton coat was more than twice as expensive as a real sheepskin jacket.

This is the value that productivity decides.

But as more and more North Koreans came to work, they slowly noticed the difference.

"Your Excellency, Your Excellency, may I ask why we do the same work, and he has more money than me!"

"He can speak Chinese, do you?"

"I won't!"

"From now on, those who can speak Chinese will be paid twice as much!"

"But he'll just say hello!"

"That's what you can say, and you should be rewarded!"

This should be Cheng Shijie's bad taste, in the time and space of the later generations, in order to learn English, this makes Cheng Shijie want to die, his English is dumb English, he knows a lot of words and grammar, but the problem is that he is afraid to speak. And with the English of Hanhai orientation, not to mention that real Europeans and Americans can't understand it, even domestic elites can't understand it.

Cheng Shijie sometimes thinks that one day in the future, from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, everyone will be learning Chinese.

Thinking about this scene, Cheng Shijie feels a little wonderful.

Now Liaodong has Westerners, Koreans, Xiaori, Mongolians and others because of their interest in industry, so standardizing the language has become another policy of Cheng Shijie.

No matter who you are, you must speak Chinese in Liaodong, and if you don't speak, or speak a foreign language openly on the street, you will be fined, just like the license plates of other places in later generations to enter Beijing, with limited number regulations.

Cheng Shijie stipulated that if he could not speak Chinese in southern Liaoning, he would pay a special tax of 50 wen yuan a day, which was for translation services.

It's okay to bring your own translator, but the money will be fined.

As for what bilingualism is, it doesn't exist, but now the Ming Dynasty is mainly exporting for overseas trade, with very little import, and there is no need to take special care of those foreigners.

Just when Cheng Shijie had just promulgated a special bill, Song Xiance, director of the Liaodong Management Committee, asked Cheng Shijie to report an incident, which attracted his attention.

"What do you mean, five ships have gone missing in this month?"

"Lord, these five ships are three rice ships from Shanghai, Dasha boats, each ship is loaded with three thousand stone rice, and two immigration ships from Huizhou Mansion, these five ships are expected to arrive in Lushun half a month ago, but there has not been, five days ago, we met the second batch of ships, only to know that these five ships are all set off as planned, but they are missing!"

"Could something be wrong?"

In Cheng Shijie's mind, the current shipping, like the airplanes of the early 20th century, is extremely risky, and the wooden sailing ships of the Ming Dynasty are ordinary and small, and the ability to engage in storms is very low.

The 100,000-ton freighter of later generations has a strong survivability in the face of a 12-level typhoon, and the current sailing ship, even if it is an advantageous sailor, has a high probability of accidents in a ninth-level gale.

"If it's a shipwreck, there will definitely be some clues, but the problem is that our channel is fixed, and it is impossible to see no traces, and besides, there is no storm this month, and it is impossible to have accidents one after another!"

Cheng Shijie thought for a while and said, "Is this a pirate making trouble on our territory?" ”

Thinking of this, Cheng Shijie said: "Meng En! ”

"Dashuai!"

"Let Li Zhixiang and Shen Shikui come here!"

"Yes!"

……

To say that the busiest branch of the Ning Navy should be regarded as the sailor division of the Ning Navy, with tens of thousands of sailors and horses, with more than 300 large and small ships, although this fleet is completely incomparable with Zheng Zhilong Zheng's fleet, and it is already a relatively huge force in the north.

Of course, the work of the naval division of the Ning Navy was mainly to help the Ning Navy transport food and immigrants, and most of the time they traveled between Lushun and Dengzhou.

Although there was no war, Li Zhixiang was also very happy, because Cheng Shijie was different from other generals, he attached great importance to the development of the sailor, in order to add ships to the sailor, Cheng Shijie built a huge shipyard in Lushun, the original Lushun shipyard only had four large docks, and now it has been expanded and has eight docks.

Each of these eight docks has the capacity to build 5,000 large ships, which is equivalent to 1,625 tons when converted into tons. Such a tonnage, placed in Europa, can also be counted as a first- or second-class battleship.

Of course, Europa's battleships were not actually based on tonnage, but according to the number of guns, and the first-class battleship was one with three decks and a total of one hundred or more guns;

The second-class battleship also had three decks with a total of about ninety guns; A third class battleship, that is, a load ship in a combat fleet, had two decks and was armed with a total of sixty-four to seventy-four guns.

The fourth rank was built according to a compromise scheme, armed with fifty guns (two decks), called cruisers, and the fifth rank battleship light cruiser, with forty-eight guns and below, with two decks.

There are also heavy 1st class battleships, with 130-140 guns on board, and super battleships (or heavy 1st class) with four decks, such as the Spanish 'Holy Trinity', or the British Sea Monarch.

At that time, the number and classification of this artillery were different according to different periods.

Equipped with such a large number of guns, in fact, there is a direct relationship with the tonnage, the ship is small and loads of artillery, the battleship can not bear the huge recoil of the artillery, sometimes when the guns are fired, the battleship will be completely moved back, and the side guns will fire, it will overturn.

For example, the 2,000 gunboats produced by the Ning Navy now have the tonnage of Europa-5 cruisers, but their guns are far inferior to those of 5-class cruisers.

Li Zhixiang had never seen Europa's large warships, but he was already very satisfied with the new ships of 2,000 materials. For example, right now, Li Zhixiang is riding on a new type of battleship of the Ning Navy, which has a very slender hull, which is a reference to the advantages of the Venetian Gatlet-class battleship.

The Gatlet-class battleships were a classic of Venice, and with a displacement of more than a thousand tons, the Galeise could be called a giant in the Mediterranean Sea at that time. With its "unparalleled" size, Calesse can carry several times more artillery and armed personnel than traditional Calais ships, and its greatest advantage is firepower and strength.

The Battle of Calese was the Battle of Lebandor in 1571. In this naval battle, which is said to be the fate of Christian Europe, both sides amassed huge fleets and armed men, with the Ottoman fleet having 250 warships with a total of 90,000 sailors and soldiers, and the Venetian fleet with 440 million sailors and soldiers with 200 warships.

On paper, the Ottomans had a huge advantage, but the outcome of the ensuing battle was a big surprise. The Ottoman fleet suffered a crushing defeat, with its commander Ali Pasha and 30,000 men killed, more than 8,000 captured, and 230 ships lost. The Venetian fleet lost thirteen ships.

The result of this naval battle was thirteen to two hundred and thirty, which was quite one to twenty, which made the reputation of the Gatlet-class battleship go far and wide. Since then, the Venetian Gallese warships have been imitated by the navies of the Mediterranean and Baltic countries, and France, Ottoman, Spain, Sweden, Russia and other countries have developed their own Gallese fleets, and Gallese has been active until the eighteenth century before being completely eliminated.

This new type of warship is the first steel keel made based on the combination of the advantages of the Gatlet-class battleship and the Daming battleship, with 3,000 materials, equivalent to 975 tons of battleship.

For this new type of 3,000-material battleship, the whole ship was equipped with 68 guns, including 36 three-inch rear-loading smoothbore guns, two five-inch guns, one in front and one in the rear, plus 34 Franc rear-loading guns.

Its firepower is so strong, it is the most powerful warship of the naval division of the Ning Navy at present, because it is the first warship to manufacture 3,000 materials, there is only one batch in total, and the other seven are still in the state of laying keels, and no one dares to guarantee whether the steel keel is suitable.

This kind of battleship with sixty-eight guns, placed in the Europa naval sequence, can barely be regarded as a third-class battleship. However, the slenderness of the hull, this new type of battleship, was not named.

Just as he was sailing on the vast sea, Shen Shikui burst out laughing.

This made Li Zhixiang a little inexplicable: "What are you laughing at?" ”

"Cheng Shuai must have miscalculated!"

"Miscalculated?"

Li Zhixiang was even more puzzled.

Shen Shikui said with a smile: "Cheng Shuai remembered to name the battleship after the place name, how many states do we have in Liaodong?" Even if the whole part of Liaodong is added together, it is only fifteen, but looking at the timber prepared by the shipyard, I am afraid that one hundred and fifty ships will not be built, the question is, do we have so many place names in Liaodong? ”

Li Zhixiang smiled and said, "How many provinces do we have in Daming?" ”

"Two capitals and thirteen provinces!"

"How many mansions?"

"One hundred and fifty-three mansions!"

"How many states?"

"Seventy-six Zhili Prefectures, forty-eight Sanzhou!"

Shen Shikui understood: "Together, a total of one hundred and fifty-three prefectures and one hundred and twenty-four prefectures, this is two hundred and seventy-seven!" ”

"Got it!"

Li Zhixiang said with a smile: "In the future, if the name of the prefecture and the name of the state are used, we will still have 1,427 counties in Daming!" ”

At this moment, a sailor said, "Lord Li, Lord Shen, we seem to have deviated from the course!" ”

"Where are you now?"

"Now it seems that it is almost to the port of Quxian (Lianyungang) in Huai'an Prefecture!"

"It's okay, let's go to sea this time, there is water and food, and when we get to Shanghai, let's go back!"

"Yes!"

As he spoke, suddenly there was a dull sound of thunder in the distance.

Li Zhixiang frowned slightly: "Is it going to change?" ”

The sailor who was on the watchtower reported: "Lord Li, there seems to be a pirate ahead!" ”

Li Zhixiang couldn't see the farther place clearly, so he immediately grabbed the telescope, and through the 40-fold telescope, he finally saw clearly, on the southeast sea surface of their production, there were four ships running in front, followed by more than a dozen clippers, and the clippers fired cannons from time to time, and one of the ships had been hit, and the fire that burned formed a huge column of smoke.

The sailor soldiers who had not fought for a long time looked at Li Zhixiang and said, "My lord, do we want to ......?"

"Immediately adjust the course and move at full speed in the direction of the sound of artillery, we will meet these pirates, dare to come to our Ning Navy's territory and smash the field!"

"Master Li, I'm afraid this is not our territory!"

"Yes, it will definitely become our territory in the future!"

As the 3,000-material ship moved forward with full sail, the speed suddenly increased, and after half an hour of sailing, the distance between the two sides became closer and closer.

Because of the closer distance, the people on the ships on both sides saw more clearly, these pursuing pirates were not sailors from all over the coast, but real pirates, although there was no flag on the ship, but the sailors on the ship, combing their hair was typical of the moon generation.

The so-called Tsukiyo head shaves all the hair on the top of the head, leaving only the hair on the side and back, while bunning the long hair at the back of his head into a bun.

If you want to say that the world's ugliest sideburns, it must be the Manchu Dynasty's money rat tail, but compared to the money rat tail, there is something uglier, that is, the samurai hair sideburns of the small day.

"That damn, it's actually a wolf!"

At this time, the sound of the cannons was clearly audible, and this pirate ship could also see clearly, there were as many as 17 ships, and many soldiers of the Ning Navy Navy Division looked at Li Zhixiang and said, "My lord, what should I do now?" ”

One to seventeen, the Ning Navy Naval Division has never fought such a battle with such a huge disparity between the enemy and us.

Although this new type is large, the problem is that the key is that this is a new ship, they are only sea trials, although the battleship is equipped with sixty-eight guns, but the problem is that these guns, each with only five rounds of ammunition, are used for test firing.

If it is a naval battle in later generations, sixty-eight times five, there are at least three hundred and forty shells, which is enough to fight, but the problem is that this is the era of smoothbore artillery naval warfare.

The warships of both sides fired hundreds of shells, and neither could help anyone.

What's more, in this sea trial, there is also a serious shortage of sailors.

Li Zhixiang gritted his teeth: "Brothers, the opportunity to get rich has come, rush up and kill them!" ”

Shen Shikui said: "Master Li, be cautious! ”

Li Zhixiang said: "If something happens, I will command and bear it!" ”

"The question is, can you afford it?"

Shen Shikui pointed to the boat under his feet and said, "This is a new ship, if something goes wrong, how do you explain to the marshal?" ”

Li Zhixiang pointed to his head and said, "Is it okay to use my head to confess?" ”

Li Zhixiang said this, and Shen Shikui stopped talking nonsense.

Li Zhixiang said: "Brothers, cherish this opportunity and strive for the starting hit!" ”

It's a nice thing to say, but the problem is that no one takes it seriously, and the probability of hitting the first shot is lower than the probability of being hit by lightning.

(End of chapter)