Chapter 1202： Get camphor

The Penghu Islands are an island lacking fresh water. There are no rivers, only small lakes with accumulated water. Because it is right in the "Pacific water vapor shadow area" of the Taiwan island, the Penghu Islands have become a rare and arid area in the southeast coast, and the wind is strong.

The characteristics of the island are that it is rainy in the eastern coastal area and the eastern part of the northern coastal area, while the western coastal area has less rainfall. For example, the Budai Saltworks on the southwestern coast of Taiwan Island is a well-known shadowed area of ​​Pacific water vapor.

Speaking of which, the Penghu Islands, which are also in the shadow of Pacific island water vapor on Taiwan Island, are also suitable for drying salt. However, Marin does not intend to promote it.

Because it is really necessary to get salt here, it will be miserable to be learned by the Portuguese. The vast coast of North Africa is more suitable for drying salt. If the Portuguese are doing salt on the coast of North Africa and West Africa, the salt cooking business of Marin will be washed away immediately. Therefore, he would rather not use good techniques, but insist on cooking salt. After all, the cost of cooking salt with coal is much lower than that of firewood, and it can form a cost advantage.

But because there are no rivers, there is a lack of freshwater ports on the Penghu Islands. In this way, warships docked for a long time in the Penghu water village are easily eroded by the maggots ... Then, how did Daming Mariners solve this problem?

"Build the bottom of the ship with Tie Limu, the maggots will not bite!" Explained a shipbuilder at Longjiang Bao Shipyard.

"What?" Marin was dumbfounded. He did not expect that the Ming people solved the problem of maggots so simple and rude. Tielimu, it's hard wood that is so hard that it can't even eat the maggots. However, it is used to build the bottom of the ship ... it seems a bit extravagant ...

Marin did not know that although there were not many Tielimus in this era, they were not small. Because of the excellent characteristics of Tielimu, it was cut down in large quantities and used to build ships and furniture, and even to build city gates. Therefore, Tielimu is also consumed in large quantities. In the later generations, because of the excessive consumption, Tieli wood has been listed as a national second-level protected plant.

But in this era, Tielimu is not scarce. Even in the Ming Dynasty, there were warships made of full-strength wood, 400 pieces, and the cost was only seven or two hundred silver, which included the cost of craftsmen and other costs. The treasure ship Zheng He sailed to the west was so big, but each ship cost about two thousand two silver.

According to the shipbuilder of the Longjiang Bao Shipyard rewarded by the Ming court, it would cost only three to four thousand two to build a large ship like Marin's 500-ton battleship, all made of iron. If only the bottom and side rails are made of iron wood, the cost is only more than two thousand ...

"Lying trough--" Marin couldn't help but slurred.

You must know that his 500-ton battleship costs up to tens of thousands of gold coins in the case of oak. A gold coin is calculated as 1 to 12 gold and silver coins, which is worth 1.14 silver. In other words, the cost of the Marin battleship is as high as 11,400 yuan.

Even if cheaper American timber is used to build ships in the future, it will be half as cheap. After all, the salaries of European shipbuilders are really high ... and the price of paint and dry oil can't be saved ...

However, if the ship is built on the Daming side, all the iron wood is used, and the cost is much lower than that on the European side. Of course, the premise is that you have to use the low-paying Daming shipbuilding craftsmen ...

According to the current salary calculation, the annual salary of Daming shipbuilding craftsmen is only a few dollars, and the annual salary of top shipbuilding craftsmen is not more than 10 two. The Beihai shipbuilding craftsman, even an apprentice shipbuilding craftsman, has a daily salary of 3 Finney and an annual salary of 21.7. And the annual salary of the experienced shipbuilding craftsman can be more than 40 two ... The salary alone, the difference is several times ...

Therefore, Marin decided in an instant-also set up a shipyard on the side of Daming, directly importing shipbuilding from Daming, and the cost can be as low as explosive.

However, according to the craftsmen of Longjiang Bao Shipyard, Daming's shipbuilding was built in sections, which were built in steps according to watertight compartments. This is not a problem. The problem is that the shipbuilding wood of the Ming Dynasty was mostly cut, and there are very few logs that can be used as keel. Even if there is, it has just been harvested and has not had time to divide. However, the keel of the sea-building ship needs to wait a year or two ... Therefore, the idea that Marin wanted to use European shipbuilding technology to blast the ship on the side of Daming was temporarily defeated, and it was feasible at least two years later. Moreover, it is now necessary to reserve enough material for the keel ...

In this regard, Marin also felt helpless. He thought about transporting the keel from the Americas, but the keel is tens of meters long, which is not very suitable for ocean shipping. Therefore, the shipyard on the island side can only wait for the keel material on the Daming side to dry enough.

But in any case, it is necessary to use Tielimu as a side guard. Tielimu sideboard, ordinary iron ball shells are difficult to penetrate. It's invincible to pack another iron sheet ...

However, it is said that this time it seems that the number of shipbuilding craftsmen that Da Ming asked the genre to provide to himself is a little too much. Therefore, Marin does not intend to leave these craftsmen here to build ships. After all, they have to wait for the material suitable as a keel to dry out and cannot build a ship for the time being. In other words, it is temporarily impossible to build a Western-style battleship.

Therefore, Marin intends to take most of the shipbuilding craftsmen to New York to manufacture warships in red oak. As for the island of Taiwan, only two thousand craftsmen are left, divided into two groups, using Daming's iron wood to build ships. In this way, it will not delay the current ship explosion, but also obtain a fleet of luxury warships made of Tielimu in the future ...

...

Speaking of wood, these days, during the inspection of logging in the Taipei Basin, Marin actually found that there were many camphor trees among the many trees that were cut.

Camphor wood itself is a good shipbuilding material because it is resistant to seawater corrosion. However, Marin knew that shipbuilding was really not a thing compared to its use in refining camphor balls.

Because the cedar on Taiwan Island is also an excellent shipbuilding wood. However, only camphor wood can refine camphor ...

So Marin found a carpenter who knew how to sort the wood. For example, Xiangshan leaves all dried to be used to build ships. The camphor wood that was cut down was all picked out and used to extract camphor ...

...

Why refine camphor? Marin is not to get camphor pills to deworm insects in the closet, but to get smokeless gunpowder ...

As mentioned earlier (the chapter of being harmonized), smokeless gunpowder requires a passivating agent because it burns too fast. Marin used paraffin wax before, but the paraffin wax passivation effect is general, and camphor is the best passivating agent currently available for Marin.

Marin did not graduate in chemical engineering, and naturally could not produce phenylenediamine which is more suitable as a passivating agent for smokeless powder. However, camphor is still easy to obtain. It can be said that camphor is the best passivating agent that can be extracted from nature. At the end of the 19th century, in the process of developing smokeless gunpowder, Nobel and other bigwigs invariably chose camphor as a passivating agent for new gunpowder. The French used paraffin wax, which caused problems, and because of the spontaneous combustion of gunpowder, it sank its own warship ...

Marin is also working on a new type of smokeless gunpowder. Although the output is small, it can also be used to do big things at a critical moment ~ www.novelhall.com ~ However, wooden boats are more vulnerable. If there is an accident with paraffin-added smokeless powder, the wooden warship is dead. Therefore, Marin now dare not easily put paraffin-added smokeless gunpowder on the battleship. The French steel warships of the late 19th century can be sunk, not to mention the flammable wooden ships?

But smokeless gunpowder is powerful, especially when used as a propellant. Used to bombard enemy ships. Therefore, Marin has long been waiting to replace paraffin with camphor as a deactivator and stabilizer for smokeless gunpowder. Once the stable and powerful smokeless gunpowder was obtained, it was time for Marin to apply them to the naval gun ...

...

Under the command of Marin, the carpenters cut all the cut camphor wood into thin slices. Then, put it in a sealed container and distill with water. The obtained steam is condensed ... and then the crude camphor with white crystals and the liquid camphor oil are obtained ...

Camphor oil does not matter, and crude camphor is further purified, you can get the military camphor that Marin dreamed of ...

Camphor is one of Marin's important goals in occupying the island. After all, later generations of Taiwan Island are known as "the camphor kingdom", and there are so many camphor trees on the island ...