Lin Gao Qiming

Chapter 740 Bopu Shipyard

最终重新启动854改工程获得了通过，执委会同意立刻开工建造1艘1630型巡洋舰、4艘500马力蒸汽拖船、12艘200吨级驳船和6艘风帆蒸汽混合动力的500吨级的船只。

In addition, according to Wen Desi's suggestion: continue to mass-produce Type II spinnaker patrol boats.Turn a sloop into a ketch.The launching speed of at least 2 ships per month.

This shipbuilding plan became the first innovation in the Lingao shipbuilding industry.Before that, Lingao's shipbuilding industry had only built light ships with a tonnage of around 200 tons.However, through the large-scale construction of single-masted/two-masted triangular sail patrol boats in the previous stage, Bopu Shipyard has accumulated considerable shipbuilding experience.

In the five-year plan, the Planning Institute has a detailed plan for the shipbuilding itself.According to Ma Qianju and Wu De's ideas, large-scale shipbuilding will start from the year before the end of the first five-year plan. According to the timetable, in this year, the crossing people will fully occupy Hainan and expand their influence overseas.

Fortunately, the Planning Commission and later the Planning Institute still knew that the shipbuilding industry was a long-term investment industry. From the first year of the five-year plan, the construction of Bopu Shipyard began.This shipyard has been greatly strengthened with the large number of shipbuilders and supplies captured from Baitu Village.The shipyard started with the transformation of ships, and then successfully imitated the "America", completing the first step of self-made Western-style sailboats.

Due to the lack of large-scale keels, the shipyard began to unswervingly follow the road of iron bones after the launch of the "Zhenhai", which was an imitation of the "America".Although there has been some controversy between the two technical routes whether it is a one-step transition to an iron shell or a wooden shell.During this period, there was also a motion to build a large-scale cement ship.

The main reason for the final adoption of wooden-hulled ships is that the industrial base of the Transit Group is still too weak.According to the tests done by the Navy in the pool, the hull made of wrought iron corrodes very quickly in seawater, and the chemical industry in Lingao has not been able to produce paint that can be used to protect the hull of the ship.In the 19th century, the solution was to wrap a layer of wood on the bottom of the iron hull, which was too labor-intensive.Although iron-hulled ships have many advantages over wooden-hulled ships in terms of manufacturing and use, this unsolvable practical problem eventually made wooden-hulled ships the mainstream of shipbuilding.

As for the cement boat, it has also been supported by many people.As a cheap water vehicle, the cement boat does have its advantages. Its advantage is that the materials are cheap and easy to obtain, and it hardly requires any special shipbuilding technology. It can be manufactured by construction workers with a little training. Ship material processing: Steel bars and wire mesh can easily produce a skeleton, and a few masons can cast cement to complete a ship in a few days.

The world's first cement ship was made by the Frenchman JL Lamport in 1848.Early cement ships were small in tonnage, simple in crafting and heavy in weight.Generally, it is only used for small-tonnage cargo transportation in inland rivers.During the two world wars, due to the lack of steel, there were two upsurges in the construction of reinforced concrete ships.

Since 1958, China has built a large number of reinforced concrete ships and steel mesh cement ships, which are widely used as barges, inland and coastal small and medium-sized motor cargo ships and inland river barges, agricultural ships and fishing boats.The number of cement ships in China is several million tons, ranking first in the world. In the 60s, the United States, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and other countries began to trial-produce steel mesh cement ships.Because the cement ship is heavy, has a small load ratio, and consumes too much fuel, its economy has not been able to meet the standard, so it has not been used on a large scale.China once built a 70-ton coastal cement cargo ship in the 5773s, but after completing the cargo voyage for the first time, it ended the voyage forever and was abandoned on the shore.

But according to the advocacy of the cement boat party headed by Skade: cement boats are more resistant to impact than wooden boats.The seaworthiness is equivalent to that of a wooden ship and exceeds that of a steel hulled ship.It's also easy to fix.No rust or rot, long life.It is the best emergency shipbuilding solution for traversers.

Skaide, the office director of the Ministry of Colonization and Trade, was so enthusiastic about cement ships that he kept advocating how "magnificent and upright" cement ships are in the crossing business in his spare time.Not only did he advocate the benefits of cement ships at the working meetings of the executive committee, but he also often went to the shipyard to talk about the technical problems of cement ships, which made several native technicians in the shipyard stupefied and entangled. Watch shipyard and navy elders wondering what it was like to "build ships like houses."Li Di was so annoyed that he simply ordered the sentry not to allow Skaide to enter the shipyard again.And declared the cement boat to be "heretical."

Li Di hates cement boats -- because cement boats don't match the glorious image of the navy.But Skade did not give up, and specifically submitted two so-called standardized ships designed by himself to the Planning Institute—facilitating mass production.One is a 250-ton single-masted scull cement ship as a transition, and the other is an 800-ton two-masted steam cement ship.

Concrete ship with shallow draft and horizontal bottom.Install sails and use Chinese style sails to simplify maintenance and reduce manpower consumption.

In terms of firepower, one or two standard frame retreating rotary gun mounts are designed, and the barrel can hold 20-60 pound smoothbore guns or 70mm-130mm rifled guns.One gun position is preset on the small cement ship, which is not used at ordinary times, and 1-3 gun positions are preset on the large cement ship, and only 4-1 gun positions are installed at ordinary times, and they are fully prepared in wartime.

The deck position is reserved on the ship, and 12-20 pounder guns and small rifled guns can be installed in wartime, and 8-12 light guns can be installed on large ships.The boat can hold 4 doors.

In the meeting room, Skade enthusiastically showed Wood the design drawings he had drawn, explaining the ideas of manufacture and use.

"If we have a fleet of 100 ships and mobilize half of them during the war, we can have 500 large and small guns, and dozens of typewriters. Time to find an opportunity to openly hold a joint exercise to frighten the Guangzhou government and the Portuguese, and let them know that we can instantly kill any city and fleet on the Pearl River with a cargo ship!" Skaide was frothing, and Wu De had gradually I became impatient.He was from the navy, and he had no interest in cement boats, which were not ships at all.

"...we first design and build the first ship in Lingao, and then move the cast-in-place and final assembly parts to Xiangshanao, and Lingao provides raw materials. After we control the coal mines in the Xijiang River Basin, we can move the cement plant to Xiangshanao , when we control the high-grade iron ore in Zhaoqing, we can build a steel factory, and then we can build iron ships..."

Wu De said: "I have never seen a cement ship floating on the sea." He intends to use this to directly shoot the motion of the cement sea ship. Is the hull shattered? It’s also anti-cannon! When I was a child, I used to sit on the cement boat in my hometown, and I was afraid of collision.”

"Actually, it worked." Skade quickly cited examples that both France and China had built [-]-ton cement sea-going ships, which shows that this is not impossible.He went on to say that the construction period of wooden boats is too long, and the wood for boatbuilding must be made of hardwood. After three to five years of natural air drying, it will soon decay, and the bottom of the boat is covered with copper and there is not so much copper.

As for the issue of firing and anti-gunning, the concrete shell should be more impact-resistant than wood. Wood has no lateral strength, and the steel bars are grid-like. If it is cracked, it can be repaired on the spot. It doesn't matter if you add a layer of steel mesh to strengthen the impact of the artillery. If there is a base under the gun mount, use steel embedded bolts and thick wood squares to isolate the shock...

Wu De patiently listened to the theory of "the superiority of cement ships" which was a mixture of materials he did not know where he found and conjectures solicited, and then he said: "If cement ships are really so superior, why were they eliminated later? ?”

"Not as superior as a ship of steel," said Skelder, "but certainly superior to a ship of wood."

However, it is not.Wu De consulted a number of veterans who had a little understanding of shipbuilding technology, and almost all of them came to the conclusion that "cement ships are not worth developing".

The impact resistance of cement boats is very poor, whether it is steel bars or barbed wire.Concrete ships with barbed wire as the skeleton have a slightly improved crack resistance than reinforced concrete ships, but they are not revolutionary—so it is untenable that barbed wire cement ships are more impact-resistant than wooden ships.

The large-scale use of barbed wire in the manufacture of cement ships mainly reduces the cost, rather than improving performance.The cement ship has the problem of small usable volume and huge self-weight—this problem is almost unsolvable.Heavy weight means high fuel consumption and low cargo capacity.Therefore, cement ships are suitable for construction ships and barges with low deadweight requirements, fixed berths or less mobile, or substitutes when steel is scarce.

In addition, steel and cement, in any case, cannot be compared with the relatively abundant forest resources in this time and space.However, the quality of barbed wire and cement produced by Lingao Industry is quite low.

In the end, the Planning Institute shot down all the motions to build cement ships, and directly included the cement ship technology in the "elimination project". .

Under the sunset in the first half of the 17th century, two people sit on a stone on a small hill.The pistol was hanging loosely by his side, and a plastic sheet was spread in front of him, on which was a box stuffed with several bottles of kvass, the latest beer produced by Lingao, ice cubes, and several pieces of beef.

Several plainclothes officers from the Political Security Bureau looked around vigilantly, and one person was roasting a leg of lamb and grilled fish a little far away.At the foot of the mountain is a construction site, even if it occupies an area no less than a modern shipyard in another time and space.Hulls of various sizes waiting to be repaired and under construction are lined up along the river bank, with shining rails and steam rising from time to time.The rattling sound of the steam crane when it was rotating and hoisting, and the sharp sound of the siren from time to time reminded the workers to pay attention to safety.

Busy crowd wearing rattan hats of different colors.The fly in the ointment is that although there is a certain distance, you can still smell some unpleasant smells.The smell of wood tar and coal tar is always lingering, not to mention the steam engine boilers that spew black smoke day and night.

The size of the shipyard far exceeds most of Lingao's industrial projects.From the first year of the five-year plan, the Planning Commission and the Planning Institute have expansion and technical renovation projects for the shipyard every year.A large-scale shipyard has been formed here.The mangroves in the Bopu estuary area have been cleared, and a large area of ​​the estuary area belongs to the shipyard.

The shipyard has successively built a thousand-ton dry dock, a large steam crane, and several hundred-ton berths.Also for the 854 project, a large forging machine was installed in the forging workshop to forge keels, ship ribs and iron plates.

Other supporting workshops have also been built one after another: a large timber fumigation kiln has been built here by the Timber Consortium, which is responsible for processing timber for shipbuilding.The "small" wood used for ship hulls can be treated in a drying kiln for about 3 days, and the effect equivalent to half a year of natural drying in the shade can be achieved. As for the large keel and ribs, it can also be processed within half a month.However, since the implementation of the guideline for iron-frame wood shells, the supply of large materials has been relatively reduced-high-quality wood that can be used as keels and masts is rare in the southern coast of China at that time, and the price is also very expensive .

The wood processing workshop using a full set of large-scale wood processing equipment made by Lingao Machinery Factory has just been completed.The equipment inside stunned the aboriginal craftsmen of the shipyard who were used to the "Australian miracle".This huge workshop is used to process special plates for shipbuilding.Large pieces of wood treated by fumigation kilns, woodworking circular saws and gang saws driven by steam engines can be unwrapped in a few minutes, which takes dozens of workers a day to unwrap a large number of ship boards and masts.The incisions are clean and neat, leaving little to no waste.A few days later, they witnessed the inhuman and terrifying power of these machines. An apprentice was accidentally sawn off half of his body by a circular saw during operation—it took less than half a minute from the time he screamed to being dismembered. .

The Indian jute used to make the ropes was shipped by Li Huamei from Goa, and the jute was blended with local hemp in the rope workshop and machined into huge ropes by mechanical rope-making machines-although the iron anchor chain It is more convenient to use and corrosion-resistant.However, in order to save iron, the anchor chains of most small and medium-sized ships in Lingao still use hemp ropes, and these ropes are also used as sail cables.

A large number of blocks are needed on sailboats. There are 5 workers in the block production workshop dedicated to the shipyard, and they use simple lathes for production: the annual output of blocks is 8—although the navy and shipyards cannot consume so much at present.The shell of the block is made of elm, and the hinges and shafts are all made of special hardwoods such as the best rosewood and green oak.

The sails are made of Lingao's homemade canvas.Cotton yarn comes from India—Indian merchants, in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Colonial Trade, custom-made cotton yarn of the required specifications from handicraftsmen, and then shipped it to Lingao in bales.It is woven into canvas in the textile factory in Lingao.Of course, the Ministry of Colonial Trade did not give up the opportunity to buy canvas directly.

The workshop where the sails are sewn is an iron frame shed covered with reed mats - some roofs will be lost during the typhoon season, but it doesn't matter if the wrought iron trusses are intact and can be repaired soon.The workshop is half the size of a football field, and dozens of specially trained female workers use semi-mechanized pedal sewing machines to sew sails.However, the sails are still threaded by hand by the women workers sitting on the benches.

The layout and setting of the entire shipyard generally refers to the setting of the British shipyard in the data.The shipyard employs more than 800 workers.It is one of the largest large enterprises in Lingao.

"Such a big shipyard, why not destroy the ship? Keep it as a theme park?" Wen Desi smashed the glass marbles on the beer, leaned back and drank a few swigs, and sighed in satisfaction.

"Finally it tastes better than beer." Wen Desi said, "Although this is a typical rice beer, I can make do with it."

"Ma Dugong is dogmatic..."

"Navy, he doesn't understand." Wen Desi waved his hand, "Shipbuilding, he is even a layman. Humph, if Wu Kuangming hadn't told him that wood can be fumigated and dried, nine out of ten would have thought that it must be dried naturally Three years. This place in Lingao can’t get better after 30 years of drying.”

Chen Haiyang took a sip of beer, he didn't want to comment on Ma Qianzhu's right and wrong.Changed the subject.

"Mr. Wen, what do you mean by suggesting to build more patrol boats?"

"Divide the sea surface into many areas, use small and fast ships to patrol in pieces, and use radio to notify nearby warships to solve the problem after discovering the enemy, and then use special transport ships to send supplies and replacement personnel. This is our current lack of resources. countermeasures."

"Wolves on the sea."

"It's similar, but not quite. Our goal is not to destroy the enemy as much as possible, but to absolutely control this ocean. Speaking of this, whether it's Liu Xiang or Zheng Zhilong, they will attack us sooner or later."

"It would be great if we could find Liu Xiang's lair and launch a Pearl Harbor-style surprise attack." Chen Haiyang said, "Our advantage is not small if we fight in the harbor."

"That's why we need to build more light patrol boats. This kind of boat is fast and flexible, and its endurance is acceptable. It is a good hand in reconnaissance." Wen Desi narrowed his eyes and watched the shipyard, "The group of people in the executive committee are short-sighted! Staring at the little resources in front of me and thinking about how to allocate them in order to cover all aspects, we are still talking about whether the resources are enough or not—do you know that there will be a chance to make a fortune next year? If you want to make this windfall, there is no ship, especially a large ship for long-distance voyages!"

"What chance to make a fortune?" Chen Haiyang became interested.

"You will know when the time comes." Wen Desi is unwilling to say more, he is still considering this proposal. Of course, there are more than one elders who have similar considerations with him, especially a group of people in the big library, who are actively Look for historical materials.The success or failure of this operation is directly related to the navy's combat power, transport capacity and endurance.

"When I think about it, I will naturally discuss it with you." Wen Desi said, "Right now, I'm still immature."

(End of this chapter)