The technical level of these traditional shipyards is not high, and they do not know how to repair Western ships, but Zhao Dagui feels that good shipbuilders are rare, and he doesn't even know where to buy wood for his own shipyard, and he doesn't have any connections, so he is still quite excited.

However, Zhao Dagui's trip was to Hong Kong, and he couldn't stay here for a long time, so he only stayed here for three days, and finally asked a shopkeeper surnamed Bai to stay and handle land ownership certificates, acquire some shipyards, and tell him to gather workers and management talents in the shipbuilding industry, and Zhao Dagui continued to go south with a large army.

This white shopkeeper, who had been a master for several officials, was good at handling complex affairs involving the government, and had made great efforts to buy land in Shanghai before, so he was recruited by Zhao Dagui into the commercial bank.

Because he has bought a lot of land for Dagui Commercial Bank, he also has the nickname of "Land Lord" in Shanghai.

By boat, we continued to Xiamen, where I stayed for a few more days as before, met with the local British consul, and inquired about business opportunities here.

It is said that the concession in Fuzhou is also very ordinary, the trade volume is very small, and nothing has been done, so Zhao Dagui lost his interest and soon left Xiamen and went straight to Hong Kong.

When he arrived in Hong Kong, anchored the ship in Victoria Harbour, found a local hotel, and arranged for everyone to rest, Zhao Dagui took the name assassin the next day to visit the second governor of Hong Kong, De Pi.

Zhao Dagui was also a well-known person at this time, even when he heard that there was such a powerful comprador in Shanghai, and he was also negotiating the establishment of regular cruise routes, so he was quickly appointed by Debe.

At this time, the Governor of Hong Kong was in fact the most powerful British official in China, and the consuls of the five treaty ports, including Consul Buff in Shanghai, were only his subordinates, which was very different from the situation after the rise of Shanghai decades later.

The first governor of Hong Kong was Sir Henry Pottinger, whose experience is also legendary, he joined the army in India in 1803 and was made a baron for his exploits in the war of aggression against Afghanistan in 1841.

After the outbreak of the war, Yilu withdrew his troops from Dinghai without authorization, and only took Hong Kong, a small place, against the direct orders of the British Empress and the Foreign Minister, before being removed from his post and investigated, and sent Pu Dingcha to China as the commander of the expeditionary force;

After the war, he remained in China and became the Governor of Hong Kong, in charge of all affairs of Hong Kong and the five treaty ports, and returned to China in May 1844 as an adviser to the Privy Council.

He then became Governor of the Cape (Cape of Good Hope) colony in 1847 and Governor of Madras in India from 1848 to 1854.

One of the things that is very interesting is that Pu Ding Cha was quite tough when he negotiated the signing of the Treaty of Nanking with Qi Ying, but he had a very good personal relationship with Qi Ying, and even changed the name of his eldest son to Qi Ying, that is, Frederick Jain Pu Ding Cha.

However, the Baron did not seem to have had good luck, and in 1865 he accidentally shot himself with his own pistol while boarding a running carriage and died at the Victoria Club in Sydney.

Let's talk about the official fortune of his father, the Governor of Hong Kong, Pu Ding Cha, who retired with the rank of lieutenant general when he retired, a position that was high enough;

But his predecessor, Yoshiritsu, retired with the rank of admiral when he retired;

Today's Shanghai Consul Bafur is his subordinate, and his military rank before becoming Shanghai Consul was only artillery captain, but he was promoted many times, and retired as an army general when he retired, which made people feel that Pu Dingcha's official fortune was not perfect.

After taking office as Governor of Hong Kong, he did not give sufficient support to opium traders, that is to say, the "normal" trade behavior of opium dealers selling opium in the trading area, and Pu Ding Cha gave sufficient support;

However, the opium dealers went to other places other than Wukou to sell or smuggle opium, and Pu Dingcha did not support it much, or did not pay enough attention to it, so his reputation in the opium dealers' circle soon changed, and the British Foreign Office was very dissatisfied, and finally let him leave his post and return to China in May 1844.

The second governor of Hong Kong was John Francis Davis, and according to the translation habits of later generations, it would have been more appropriate to become Davis.

His father, Samuel Davis, was an executive (CEO) and amateur artist of the East India Company, and his mother, Henrietta Boileau, was a member of a French aristocratic family that had taken refuge in England.

De Pi was the eldest son of the family, first as a clerk sent to Canton by the East India Company, and came to China in 1813, after which he worked hard to learn Chinese and translate a work called "Three and Lou";

In 1816 he went to Peking as an attaché to Lord Amsterd;

Upon his return, in 1832 he became chairman of the East India Company's special committee in Canton, and at the same time became a member of the Royal Asiatic Society;

In 1833, the British government terminated the East India Company's patent rights for trade with China, and instead set up a commercial director in China, and then the commercial director in China, Lyuropy, became the first commercial director in China, and De Bye became the deputy director of commerce in China (equivalent to the British consul, and Yilu's position before the Opium War was the director of commerce in China);

Soon after, he was able to break into Guangzhou and clash with Qing officials, which caused the deterioration of Sino-British relations and greatly affected trade.

Later, 85 British businessmen, including Jardine's and Medison Madichen of Jardine Matheson & Co., wrote a joint letter to King William IV of England, demanding that when DePie was deposed, he would send a military man as the director of commerce, and at the same time send the army to avenge the law, and finally DePie announced his resignation and returned to England after only a hundred days in office (the subsequent commercial directors seem to be all soldiers, such as Yilu himself is a major officer).

When he was in office, he hardly collected taxes in Hong Kong, and before he took office, the British government asked him to increase the Hong Kong government's fiscal revenue to alleviate the dilemma of Britain subsidizing a large amount of money to Hong Kong.

Therefore, De Pi thought that the registration of household registration certificates, the collection of land tax, poll tax (the result of the first census of Puhong Kong in 1844 was 23,988 people, both Chinese and British had to pay poll tax, forcing many Chinese to leave Hong Kong), prostitute tax (a very important source of income, everyone understands), patent tax, property tax, etc., made people complain, and became the most unpopular governor of Hong Kong residents.

According to the Treaty of Nanjing, the British government could have set up a consulate in Guangzhou, but the Qing government and the people tried their best to oppose it, and then the British threatened not to return the Zhoushan Islands, which led to the British making an agreement with Debeo in April 1846 (Zhoushan would be returned a few months later) to allow the British to enter the city of Guangzhou as appropriate.

The British agreed that as long as the Qing court did not grant the Zhoushan Islands to foreign countries, they would return the Zhoushan Islands and put aside the request to enter the city of Guangzhou.

When this agreement came out, the reaction in Canton was high, and many people organized group exercises to clash with the British missionaries and merchants in Canton.

Finally, in April 1847, De Pi sent three warships and 900 soldiers to capture the Humen Fort and the 13 Lines of Canton, and then Qiying intervened, promising to severely punish the troublemakers and guarantee that the British would establish a consulate in Guangzhou within two years.

After signing the treaty, Qiying knew that this could not be done, and fearing that he would be held accountable two years later, so he tried his best to ask the imperial court to be transferred to another place, and finally transferred to another place as he wished; Xu Guangjin, the governor of Liangguang, and Ye Mingchen, the governor of Guangdong, jointly adopted strong measures to refuse the British to enter the city, so that Depi was never able to set up a British consulate in Guangzhou during his tenure as governor of Hong Kong.

It is worth noting that because of the translation problem, the Qing Dynasty and the British had a great difference in their understanding of the Treaty of Nanjing, and the British believed that according to the English version, Hong Kong Island would be ceded to the British; the Qing court used Macao as the blueprint for Hong Kong, that is, to establish a Chinese government in Hong Kong to govern the Chinese, just like Macau.

Later, DePi unilaterally declared that the British government had the right to govern the Chinese who committed crimes, and finally because the elderly were bent on establishing a good relationship with Debeki, they were shameful to give in and let Britain obtain complete governance power.

Without further ado, the meeting between Zhao Dagui and De Pi was pleasant.

The two talked about the scenery of Shanghai, the trade and the traditional friendship between China and Britain (hell, is there such a thing), and then went all over the world, from Shakespeare to Milton to Newton and the current Queen.

It should be said that Zhao Dagui left a good impression on Depi, knowledgeable, and has enough understanding of the Western world, and Depi himself recalled that after so many years in China, it seems that Zhao Dagui is the only Chinese who can talk to him about Shakespeare, Milton and Newton.

No wonder Bafur was concerned about this man, and Debeshi nodded inwardly.

"Bafur told me that you wanted to buy a couple of boats and run a regular cruise between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and I supported that.

It's just that it's very expensive to do and requires a high level of expertise.

First of all, have you found the sailors you need to start the ship?" asked the Governor of Debes.

"That's where I want Mr. Governor and Mr. Consul to help.

As you know, Chinese ships are completely different from Western ships, and there are very few Chinese sailors who can sail Western sailing ships, and when it comes to more complex steamships, there are even fewer people.

I hope that the Governor or Mr. Consul will help recruit Western sailors, or send excellent sailors in the navy to help train and guide until a group of Chinese sailors who can control Western ships are trained.

The cost of these things will definitely be sufficient from my side. Zhao Dagui said politely.

"Well, it can't be helped. By the way, if you use a steam ship, you need to use coal, is there coal in Shanghai?"

"There are no coal mines in Shanghai, but I have been preparing for this time and have brought some coal mines from the Yangtze River basin and Jilong Mountain on Dayuan Island.

I asked some captains of steamships to see it, and they said that the coal was shallow coal, and the quality was barely enough, and if it could, it would be necessary to use high-quality coal from deep depths.

I have the intention of looking for a coal mine to operate, but it will take time, and I am afraid that I will have to deal with inferior shallow coal in the early days. ”

"There should be a lot of coal mines in China, but the mining technology is not good, and we can only use shallow low-quality coal, which is a great pity.

It would be nice to convince your government to introduce the same deep development technology as the British to produce high-quality coal. De Pi said with emotion that it seems that he is not less worried about coal in Hong Kong.

Many netizens think that back to ancient times, just find a coal mine to mine, you can use it for steam engines, but they don't know that shallow coal is of poor quality and is not particularly suitable for steam engines and ships.

If you want to dig deep coal mines, you need to invest a lot of money, buy professional mining equipment, and hire high-level engineers.

De Pi chatted with Zhao Dagui for a while, and frowned, although he had expected it before, Zhao Dagui's preparation was really insufficient.

"To start a scheduled cruise, you need to have the support of a ship repair yard, and it has to be on both sides.

On the Hong Kong side, there are a few British shipyards, which should be fine, but in Shanghai, there seems to be nothing, but if something happens to the ship, it can't be repaired, how do you want to solve it?" asked De Pi Shi with a frown.

"Well, I have two Chinese shipyards, but they are full of Chinese workers, and it is difficult to repair Western sailing ships, and when it comes to steamships, it is completely blind.

So, if I could, I would like to buy the necessary machinery, recruit workers and technicians, and build a completely Western-style shipyard in Shanghai, so that I don't have to worry.

Of course, I have no experience in this area, so I need Mr. Governor's guidance. Zhao Dagui said that to be honest, for him, building a shipyard itself is much more important than buying a ship.